A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of a bestselling detective novelist and dissident on allegations of “justifying terrorism,” two months after two pro-Kremlin activists tricked him into voicing sympathy for Ukraine over the phone.
Grigory Chkhartishvili, who goes by the pen name Boris Akunin and lives overseas, has been ordered by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court to be imprisoned.
In December, Russian authorities added the Russian-Georgian writer to Russia’s list of “extremists and terrorists” following the conversation, in which two pranksters known as Vovan and Lexus pretended to be Ukrainian officials.
Report says a criminal case was opened against Akunin for “discrediting the army” specifically for “justifying terrorism” and spreading “fake news” about the Russian military.
Meanwhile, discrediting the Russian military is a criminal offense under a law adopted after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The law is regularly used against Kremlin critics although it is unlikely that Akunin, who lives in London, will face detention.
After the authorities branded Akunin an extremist, one of Russia’s leading publishers, AST, announced it was suspending the printing and selling of his books.
In a statement shared online, Akunin called his publisher’s decision “an important milestone” and said that since the purges of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Russian writers had not faced terrorism-related accusations.
In addition, the supporters of prominent opponent of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, revealed that the politician and anti-corruption activist has been assigned to a solitary punishment cell within the isolated Arctic prison colony, where he is completing a 19-year sentence.
Navalny, 47, has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
He has since received three prison terms, including on charges of extremism, fraud, and contempt of court.
Report says Navalny and his allies have rejected all charges against him as politically motivated, and accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him in jail for life.
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