Russian authorities detained Antonina Favorskaya, also known as Antonina Kravtsova, on March 17, 2024, and charged her 11 days later with collecting material and making and editing videos and publications for the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which Russian authorities have banned as extremist.
Favorskaya, a journalist with the independent news outlet SOTAvision, covered Navalny’s court hearings and his prison conditions. She also shot the last video of Navalny and reported on his funeral and how Russian people mourned the politician.
About seven Moscow law enforcement officers detained Favorskaya at a café near the cemetery where she’d recently visited Navalny’s grave. On March 18, a Moscow court sentenced her to 10 days in detention for allegedly disobeying a police officer after police claimed she tried to escape and refused to show her identity documents — charges the journalist denied. Favorskaya was detained again upon her release on March 27, and law enforcement searched her home and her parents' apartment that day.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, denied that Favorskaya had published anything on the organization’s platforms.
During a closed-door hearing on March 29, a Moscow court ordered Favorskaya to be held pending investigation on charges of participating in an extremist group. Her pretrial detention has been extended several times, most recently in early October, until March 17, 2025. If found guilty, she could face up to six years in prison under Article 282.1, Part 2, of Russia’s criminal code.
The journalist told the court that she believed she was prosecuted for writing about Navalny, specifically a March 6 report about his brutal prison conditions.
On August 16, Favorskaya was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.”
Her case was combined with the cases against Artyom Krieger, another SOTAvision journalist, as well as freelance journalists Sergey Karelin and Konstantin Gabov, who are also accused of cooperation with Navalny’s FBK. The trial of the four journalists started behind closed doors on October 2. All denied the charges.
In early November, the journalists’ lawyers told independent news outlet RusNews that the four of them were feeling “fine.”
In late 2024, CPJ emailed the Moscow branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee for comment but received no response.