Russia puts journalist under house arrest for 'fake' news about Ukraine war

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published 9 months ago |  CPJ News Alert

NEW YORK—CPJ calls on Russian authorities to drop legal proceedings against 64-year-old Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash, who is under house arrest and could be jailed for up to 10 years for criticizing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On February 25, Ukrainian-born Barabash, a film critic for the independent outlet Republic, was detained and charged with spreading “fake” news. The following day, a Moscow court placed her under two months’ house arrest ahead of her trial. Barabash’s reporting frequently has a political and anti-war stance.

Also on February 26, a court in the Far East city of Khabarovsk fined Sergey Mingazov, a news editor with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, 700,000 rubles (US$8,062) for publishing false information about the Russian army.

“The criminal cases against Ekaterina Barabash and Sergey Mingazov demonstrate how Russian authorities are weaponizing ‘fake’ news legislation to silence those who dare to contradict Kremlin-approved narratives on the Ukraine war,” said CPJ’s program director, Carlos Martínez de la Serna.

The charges against Barabash stem from four Facebook posts in 2022 and 2023, three of which have since been removed. In the fourth, she condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a recurring theme in her commentary.

“While under house arrest, she is not allowed to publish anything or communicate via social media or a phone,” her son Yury Barabash told CPJ, adding that he believed the charges were “politically motivated” and linked to “her social media or/and her professional activities.”

Mingazov was put under house arrest in April for three reposts on his Telegram channel of news about the 2022 massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. 

Russia was the fifth worst jailer of journalists worldwide, with at least 30 reporters behind bars on December 1, 2024, in CPJ’s latest annual global prison census. Of these, six were jailed for “fake” news.

CPJ did not receive a response to its request for comment sent to the Moscow branch of the Russian Investigative Committee, a federal body in charge of investigating crimes, via its website.

Photo caption: Russian journalist Ekaterina Barabash, seen here during her hearing, was detained on February 25 and charged with spreading “fake” news over Facebook posts critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (Photo: Mediazona)