Russia

The bill, that would subject popular bloggers to the same restrictions as traditional media in the country, was approved by Russia's parliament, the State Duma, in a final reading on Monday. The bill would apply to blogs with more than 3,000 daily visitors. As with other laws recently adopted in Russia, the language of the bill is broad and open to wide-ranging interpretation and selective...

Russian authorities have finally dropped the drug possession charges they first brought against Sochi-based independent journalist Nikolai Yarst in May 2013. Sochi police headquarters formally notified his lawyers on March 15 that the case has been dismissed. Yarst and a colleague were heading to an appointment at the Sochi office of the Investigative Committee (Russia’s FBI equivalent) in the...

The Committee to Protect Journalists has expressed alarm at the blocking on Thursday of independent and pro-opposition news websites in Russia, including Ezhednevny Zhurnal, Grani, Kasparov, and the website of the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy. The popular blog of anti-corruption activist Aleksei Navalny and the personal blogging platform LiveJournal were also blocked. "Russian authorities are...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports that veteran U.S. journalist David Satter has been banned from Russia for five years. Satter, adviser to the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, told CPJ that the Russian foreign ministry told him to leave the country on December 4 and reapply for a Russian visa. But, he...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned last week’s seizure of all 40,000 copies of Izvestia Kaliningrada, a weekly published in Russia’s western exclave of Kaliningrad. It was the latest example of regional governors abusing their power to silence media that annoy them. “We are disturbed to see this form of censorship used more than once in a short space of...

Rustam Makhmudov, the suspected hit-man in the October 2006 murder of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya, was arrested May 31 in Chechnya, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “The arrest of the man suspected of carrying out the Politkovskaya shooting is a major advance but many questions remain unanswered,” RSF said. “Nearly five years have gone by...

A court in Makhachkala, the capital of the southern republic of Dagestan, has ended a three-year legal battle by acquitting the weekly Chernovik on charges of extremism, inciting hatred and defaming the security forces, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The charges were brought against editor Nadira Isayeva and four of her journalists – Biakay Magomedov...

Yakhya Magomedov, the young editor of the Avar-language version of a bi-monthly magazine that promotes a moderate vision of traditional Islam, was gunned down in northern Dagestan on May 8, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). “We offer our condolences to Magomedov’s relatives and colleagues and we urge the authorities not to leave his death unpunished,”...

The conviction and sentencing of two defendants in the 2009 double murder of freelance journalist Anastasiya Baburova and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov is a landmark victory in the fight against impunity in press killings in Russia, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. Moscow City Court Judge Aleksandr Zamashnyuk gave defendant Nikita Tikhonov life in a strict-regime penal colony...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has welcomed the guilty verdict in the 2009 murder of Anastasiya Baburova, freelance reporter with the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who was shot and killed in Moscow along with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Markelov had represented Novaya Gazeta journalists in various legal cases. On Thursday, a jury at the...