Press Release, 28.08.2023

Photo: Mikhail Afanasyev / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

On 29 August, at 9:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. Moscow time), the Abakan City Court of the Republic of Khakassia will hold a hearing on the criminal case on “fakes” (Article 207.3, Part 2, Clause A of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against Mikhail Afanasyev. Afanasyev, the Editor-in-Chief of the Novy Focus online publication and a member of the Yabloko party, will speak in the debate and make his final statement. Nikolai Rybakov, Chairman of the Yabloko party, will fly to Abakan to support him.

The public prosecutor asked six years in prison for Mikhail Afanasyev, a member of Yabloko and a journalist from Abakan. Afanasyev, a two-time winner of the Andrey Sakharov Prize “For Journalism as an Action, has been kept in a pre-trial detention centre for the second year already on the charges of spreading “fake news” about the army (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Afanasyev is accused of publishing an article in the Novy Focus online media about the refusal of riot police from Khakassia to go to Ukraine a month and a half after the start of the special military operation.

“The public prosecutor asked six years for Mikhail for honest journalism, for a civil position, for the exercising of his constitutional right – freedom of speech and the media. Six years in prison for a father of five children and the only breadwinner in the family. Mikhail is a courageous man, he once again has demonstrated during a year and a half in prison that he is a real citizen of his country. I will go to Abakan to support him on behalf of the whole party,” Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov says.

It should be noted that five members of Yabloko became defendants in criminal cases related to the “special military operation”. The leaders of the Yakutsk and Kamchatka branches of Yabloko, Anatoly Nogovitsyn and Vladimir Yefimov, were found guilty of “discrediting the army” and sentenced to 200,000 roubles each. In August 2023, a criminal case on “discrediting the army” against Nikolai Yegorov, the leader of the Vologda regional branch of Yabloko, was submitted to court. A pre-investigation check in relation to Yegorov is underway under a criminal article on “fake news” (https://eng.yabloko.ru/31683-2/ ). In June 2023, Vasily Neustroyev, Chairman of the Frunzensky local branch of Yabloko in St. Petersburg, became a defendant in several criminal cases at once, including the case of “fake” about the army. Like Mikhail Afanasyev, Vasily Neustroyev has been in jail since his arrest.