Russia: journalist arrested for ‘fake news’ about armed forces
A criminal case has been opened against a Siberian journalist whose news website published content critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian media reported on Thursday.

Mikhail Afanasyev, chief editor of Novy Fokus in the Russian region of Khakassia, was arrested by security forces on Wednesday over the website’s reporting on 11 riot police who allegedly refused deployment to Ukraine.

Afanasyev was accused Thursday of disseminating “deliberately false information” about the Russian armed forces, an offence that carries a maximum 10-year jail sentence under a law passed last month.

The charges come amid an unprecedented crackdown on independent media and anti-war dissent. Last month, the Russian parliament passed a law imposing a jail term of up to 15 years for spreading intentionally “fake” news about the military.

Afanasyev has published numerous investigations into sensitive issues in Khakassia, such as organised crime and alleged abuses of power by local officials.

In 2009, he was accused of libel after publishing stories that criticised the Russian government’s response to an explosion at the country’s largest hydroelectric plant that year. And in 2016, he reportedly faced death threats from a criminal gang active in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, after he detailed the group’s illegal activities and suspected ties to local police.

Another Siberia-based journalist was also arrested Wednesday on suspicion of breaching Russia’s new laws on media coverage of the situation in Ukraine. Sergei Mikhailov, founder of the LIStok weekly newspaper, based in the republic of Altay, was reportedly placed in pre-trial detention over the outlet’s alleged “calls for sanctions against Russia”.

LIStok’s website has been blocked since March for “promoting” activities opposing Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

Four student journalists were sentenced on Wednesday to two years’ “corrective labour” over an online video in which they defended young Russians’ freedom of assembly.

Former Doxa journalists Armen Aramyan, Natasha Tyshkevich, Alla Gutnikova and Volodya Metelkin had been under house arrest for almost a year after they were detained in April 2021 for posting a three-minute video on YouTube in which they said it was illegal to expel and intimidate students for participating in rallies in support of the jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

A Moscow court on Tuesday said the video had encouraged “the involvement of minors” in anti-Kremlin protests.