Tomorrow, editors of the leading Russian student news website DOXA will be sentenced in court.
Their offence? Publishing a video about whether Russian teachers should discourage schoolchildren from attending rallies in support of Alexey Navalny in January 2021, just after the opposition leader returned to Russia. Prosecutors claimed that the video, aside from leading to the arrest of over 100 people under the age of 18 at an opposition protest, could have also helped spread coronavirus.
Prosecutors have requested that Armen Aramyan, Natasha Tyshkevich, Volodya Metelkin and Alla Gutnikova receive two years of “correction labour” (akin to community service) – as well as a ban on running websites. The editors say the video was deleted from DOXA’s website after the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor asked them to remove it, but several months later, the Russian Investigative Committee began a criminal investigation.
