Journalist Nika Novak is serving a four-year prison sentence after being convicted on November 26, 2024, on charges of “confidential cooperation with a foreign organization.” She was detained by Russian authorities in December 2023.
Novak, a journalist from the far-eastern city of Chita, is the former editor-in-chief of local outlet ChitaMedia and former editor-in-chief of the local news portal Zab.ru. Since 2022, she had been a freelance correspondent for the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which Russia banned as “undesirable” in February 2024.
Novak was detained on December 25, 2023, in Moscow. Her detention was extended several times during closed-door hearings until her sentencing.
The regional branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Novak of cooperating with a foreign media outlet, alleging that she was paid to help prepare inaccurate materials discrediting the Russian army and state authorities.
Novak is the first journalist to be sentenced to prison under the law against “confidential cooperation with a foreign state or organization,” according to investigative news outlet Agentstvo. The law, adopted in July 2022, allows a prison sentence of up to eight years in jail, under Article 275.1 of Russia’s criminal code.
Novak’s sentence was upheld on March 31, 2025.
Novak, who was serving her sentence in prison in Bozoy, in the Siberian region of Irkutsk, went missing on November 26, 2025. Three days after that, the journalist’s lawyer, Yulia Kuznetsova, said that prison authorities had not allowed anyone to meet with Novak that week. Kuznetsova and the journalist’s mother said that she may have been transferred to another location, an allegation the prison administration has neither confirmed nor denied. During a prison transfer, which can take several weeks, the prisoner cannot be reached.
Since her imprisonment, Novak has been placed in isolation and solitary confinement several times, complained about a “dangerous” cellmate, and went on at least three hunger strikes to protest her detention conditions. On November 12, 2025, CPJ and nine partner organizations urged the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to issue an opinion finding that Novak’s continued detention by the Russian government is arbitrary, and violates international law.
In December 2025, CPJ emailed the Ministry of Interior and the Prison No. 11 in Bozoy requesting information on Novak’s location but did not immediately receive a reply.