Law enforcement agencies has put Alexander Peskov, the correspondent of SOTA and Activatica.org, on the federal wanted list. At the end of March, investigators opened a criminal case against the journalist for insulting a representative of authority. Peskov is currently not in Russia. SOTA reported that.
The editorial office learned about the search from the response of the Arkhangelsk prosecutor's office to a request about why the journalist had been detained on March 25. On this day, the investigators took Alexander Peskov away for questioning and opened a criminal case against him for insulting a representative of authority.
According to law enforcement officers, as the journalist was being searched in the case of extremism of Alexei Navalny's structures, Peskov "addressed the expert on the seizure of equipment indecently." But according to the activist, he stood up for his girlfriend, SOTA’s correspondent Darya Poryadina, whom the security officer began mocking at. After the criminal case was initiated, the couple left Russia.
On March 22, opposition politician Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in a high-security prison. He was accused of fraud and contempt of a court.
After that, security forces came to Navalny's supporters with searches and seizures because of cases on extremism. In Arkhangelsk, in addition to SOTA’s journalists, law enforcement officers searched activist Ilya Lashukov, ex-coordinator of local Navalny's headquarters* Elizaveta Bychkova, and social activist Olga Shkolina, who supports political prisoners. Bychkova and Shkolina’s status has already been changed from witnesses to suspects.
