Berlin, August 6, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists denounces Tuesday’s sentencing of exiled journalist Dmitry Kolezev to 7 ½ years in prison in absentia on charges of spreading “fake” news about the Russian army and urges authorities to stop harassing Russian journalists abroad.
“The lengthy prison sentence meted out to Dmitry Kolezev in absentia underscores Russian authorities’ intensifying repression of journalists who have been forced to flee the country because of their reporting,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said in New York. “Russian authorities must immediately stop their transnational crackdown on exiled Russian journalists who report critically on the war in Ukraine.”
The case against Kolezev, former editor-in-chief of the independent media outlet Republic and founder of the Yekaterinburg-based news site It’s My City, stems from his 2022 Instagram posts about the massacre in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, Kommersant newspaper reported.
“I thought it would take a couple of days, but it turned out to be some sort of judicial fast food: a verdict reached in two hours,” Kolezev said in a post on Telegram.
In 2022, Kolezev was designated a “foreign agent,” requiring him to submit reports of his activities and expenses to authorities and to list his foreign agent status on publications, and he was also added to the federal list of individuals wanted on criminal charges.
Russian authorities have effectively clamped down on independent reporting in the country since their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Hundreds of Russian journalists have fled into exile, where they are now increasingly harassed by the authorities with fines, arrest warrants and jail terms in absentia.