Independent journalist Sasha Aleksandrova is serving a three-year prison sentence after being convicted on charges of “justifying terrorism” in November 2025.
Aleksandrova was detained on March 20, 2025, in the Siberian city of Yakutsk on charges of “justifying terrorism.” The reason for the charges was undisclosed.
Aleksandrova, who worked with regional news outlets, including newspaper Nashe Vremya, news portal News.Ykt.ru,and news outlet SakhaDay, left Russia in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and created the now-deleted website and Telegram channel ZIMA, where she spoke out against the war and published content critical of Russian authorities. She returned to Russia in 2024.
Aleksandrova’s trial started on September 16, 2025. On November 28, a court in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk convicted her of justifying terrorism and sentenced her to three years in jail for allegedly “distributing publications on the Internet containing video recordings with linguistic signs of justification of terrorism, recognition of the ideology and practice of terrorism as correct, deserving of support and imitation.”
The court did not disclose information about the publications linked to the charges against her. According to news outlet SakhaDay, they are likely related to her critical posts on her personal Telegram channel.
Aleksandrova was added to Russian financial intelligence agency Rosfinmonitoring’s list of extremists and terrorists on March 31. She was detained in pretrial detention center No. 1 in the Republic of Sakha in Yakutsk, in the Republic of Sakha.
In February 2026, CPJ emailed the center for information about Aleksandrova’s current location but did not receive a response.