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Romanian Man From England Jailed 15 Years in Russia After Online Romance Led Him to Abkhazia
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A Romanian citizen raised in England was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Russia on espionage charges, following what Reuters exposed as a staged FSB arrest video filmed months after his actual detention, Reuters reported on October 22.
David Adrian Kercso, now 23, was accused by Russia’s Federal Security Service of passing information about Russian air-defense systems in Sochi to Ukrainian intelligence.
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The FSB released footage purporting to show Kercso being arrested in a park in Sochi. However, Reuters analysis of the video and Russian court records showed that he had already been in Russian custody for several months when the footage was recorded.
The first public announcement of Kercso’s detention came from pro-Russian separatist authorities in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, after he disappeared on November 28, 2024.
Two weeks later, Abkhazian security authorities released video showing Kercso in custody and confessing that he had been in contact with Ukrainian intelligence and had been instructed to film military sites with a drone.
Kercso later wrote to his family that the confession had been dictated to him by his captors and that he had been told he would be sent home if he memorized and repeated the statement on camera.
Instead, he was transferred to Russia and appeared before a judge in Sochi on December 14, 2024. Court records reviewed by Reuters documented 10 appearances over the following four months as his detention was repeatedly extended.
Kercso wrote that the FSB filmed the staged arrest scene in mid-April 2025, after taking him from jail early in the morning to a park along Sochi’s Matsesta River.
Reuters found that the visible vegetation and location details were consistent with his account and showed the footage could not have been recorded before his documented detention began.
“We have seen this in dozens of cases where individuals detained months earlier are taken to a city street, a forest, or a train station so that a staged arrest video can be filmed,” Russian lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told Reuters.
Kercso also alleged that he was beaten, tortured, and held in isolation after being transferred to Russia. Reuters could not independently verify those claims.
When he was sentenced, the FSB stated that Kercso had transmitted the location of Russian air-defense systems in Sochi to Ukrainian intelligence during the summer of 2024.
Kercso rejected the accusation and stated that his later confession to the FSB had also been coerced.
“None of that happened, they stole my life for no reason and fabricated everything,” he wrote.
Kercso’s family believes he traveled to the Black Sea region after beginning an online relationship with a woman from Abkhazia. His mother stated that she had warned him not to go because of the war.
“Now I know that coming here was a huge mistake,” Kercso wrote from prison. “I was blinded by love and didn’t see the warning signs.”
Kercso’s case is not the only recent example of a Western national facing serious consequences after going to Russia. One such case is Texas resident Derek Huffman, who moved there with his family in 2025 under Moscow’s “shared values” visa program, then joined the Russian military and was reportedly sent near the front line despite initially expecting a non-combat role.
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