“Anything but fair”. Four Russian journalists jailed for 5.5 years over alleged ties to Navalny’s banned Anti‑Corruption Foundation

Four journalists were sentenced on Monday to five and a half years in prison each by Moscow’s Nagatinsky District Court for allegedly taking part in the activities of the banned Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The trial was held entirely behind closed doors, and little is publicly known about the substance of the charges. The press office for Moscow’s courts said the journalists were accused of gathering materials, editing videos and publishing content for ACF, which Russian authorities have designated as an “extremist organisation” in 2021.

SotaVision reporter Antonina Favorskaya was detained in March 2024 after visiting Alexei Navalny’s grave in Moscow. Initially held for ten days on a minor administrative charge of disobeying police, a common pretext, she was rearrested immediately upon release and charged under criminal articles related to ACF.

During her pre-trial hearings, also closed to the media, she managed to shout that she was being prosecuted “for an article about how the Federal Penitentiary Service tortured Alexei Navalny.” In a letter from pre-trial detention, Favorskaya later wrote that she was also accused of “helping organise Navalny’s funeral.”

On April 27, 2024, two more journalists were arrested—Sergey Karelin and Konstantin Gabov, who had worked with the Associated Press and Reuters respectively. In July, the case expanded to include Artyom Krieger, another journalist from SotaVision. By August, lawyers told Mediazona the investigation had been completed.

From the very first hearing, Judge Natalia Borisenkova closed the proceedings to the public, citing a letter from Russia’s anti-extremism police unit warning of “planned provocations”. In October, the Moscow City Court denied press accreditation altogether.

During the December hearings, witnesses for the prosecution were questioned in secret. Mediazona was able to identify at least one of them as a participant in a street interview previously aired on the “Navalny LIVE” YouTube channel.

On April 10, 2025, prosecutor Tikhonova requested a sentence of five years and eleven months in a penal colony for each of the defendants—just one month short of the maximum possible sentence for these charges. All defendants demanded full acquittal. The verdict, delivered on April 15, matched prosecutrion’s request closely: five and a half years in prison.

Only two family members per defendant were allowed into the courtroom. Several diplomats, including representatives from the U.S., U.K., Switzerland, and New Zealand, were also granted access. Journalists were warned not to raise their cameras in hallways, under threat of arrest. As the journalists were led into court, dozens of supporters chanted their names and applauded.

“Everything will be all right, don’t lose hope—sooner or later this will end,” Krieger told the crowd after the verdict. “Those who sentenced me will be in prison one day,” he added. Artyom’s father, Pavel Krieger, shaked his head: “This trial was anything but fair.”