He lived in the Bryansk region, but in recent years, after he was widowed, he settled in Chernihiv to help his elderly father. At the time of his arrest, he was a Russian citizen with a Ukrainian residence permit. Shur's father is a well-known collector of icons. Shur himself is a jeweller and entrepreneur, who studied to be a diamond cutter. On December 9, 2014, Shur was detained at the Novye Yurkovichi multilateral road checkpoint in Bryansk region, accused of hitting a police officer. He was arrested for 15 days. However, he was then charged with treason. Relatives claim that he was tortured, after which he refused a lawyer hired under the agreement and signed a confession. In addition, according to the relatives, Shur was promised that if he confessed his guilt, he would be given a small sentence. According to the investigation, Shur was commissioned by the Ukrainian Border Guard Service to "collect information constituting a state secret", namely to take several photographs of a military airfield abandoned in the 1980s. On October 7, 2015, Viktor Shur was sentenced to 12 years in a strict regime colony