Russian Forbes Journalist Sergei Mingazov Placed Under House Arrest for Spreading Fake News About Russian Army

A journalist who writes for the Russian edition of the American business magazine Forbes has been placed under house arrest by a Russian court. Sergei Mingazov was arrested on Friday for spreading fake news about the Russian army.

The Russian journalist was arrested in his hometown of Khabarovsk, a city in the east of the country, and held in a detention center. Houses were also searched and computers and phones were seized.

More than 400 bodies were found in Butcha after Russian troops withdrew in April 2022. Some of them had signs of torture. The Kremlin has consistently denied that Russian forces executed civilians in Butcha, saying the allegations of war crimes are intended to show Russia in a bad light.

Russia has been criticizing the war since the invasion of Ukraine. New laws criminalize spreading ‘false information’ or disparaging the military.

According to his lawyer, Mingazov faces ten years in prison. He has been temporarily detained for two months by the Khabarovsk court. He is also not allowed to communicate with people other than his family members, lawyers and doctors and is completely banned from using the internet.

A number of journalists, opposition members and citizens were given long sentences. One of the most famous is the American Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been in a Moscow prison for over a year while awaiting trial. The longest sentence was given to the famous activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was sentenced to 25 years.