Photo: Alex Lesley / Instagram

Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case against Russian blogger Alexander Kirillov, better known as Alex Lesley, for incitement to rape, its press department reported on Wednesday.

According to investigators, Lesley urged his online followers to sexually assault women in Moscow and film the acts. Lesley had announced a “body training” session for men on his Telegram channel on 20 June which included a link to a private chat. There, Lesley encouraged his followers to touch female passersby inappropriately and suggest they have sex.

Several women in Moscow promptly complained of experiencing sexual harassment, adding that the police had failed to respond to their complaints, Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported. Passersby also chose not to help, they said.

Lesley first found fame after an investigation by Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) into Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, which uncovered via the Instagram account of a Lesley associate, Nastya Rybka, that Deripaska had holidayed on the yacht of Sergey Prikhodko, a former Russian deputy prime minister.

Rybka and Lesley were detained in Thailand in February 2018 after offering sex training tips to tourists. The pair were given suspended sentences and deported to Russia in January 2019, where they were detained upon arrival in Moscow but released a few days later.