Moscow court logs administrative case against Meduza journalist Lilia Yapparova
Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova has been charged with illegal participation in an “undesirable” organization. On Thursday, the news outlet Mediazona reported the misdemeanor case against Yapparova. The materials submitted to Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court do not specify what prompted the charges. Russia’s Prosecutor General outlawed Meduza as an “undesirable” organization in January 2023.
Another Moscow court filed separate “undesirable” participation charges against Russian nuclear policy expert Maksim Starchak, who’s previously granted interviews to Meduza and other banned news outlets, including iStories, Riddle, and The Insider.
Past reporting by Yapparova
- ‘This is mourning’ Meduza correspondent Liliya Yapparova reports from Yerevan in the aftermath of the settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh
- ‘You really are a terrorist’ How Russia’s FSB recruits former ISIS fighters — and tries to plant them in Ukrainian battalions
- ‘Mom, please make it stop’ Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova was in Chernihiv in the final days before Russian troops cut it off from the outside world. Here’s what she saw.
- ‘He considered himself indestructible’ Meduza spoke to Wagner mercenaries about the plane crash that killed Yevgeny Prigozhin
- ‘They would prefer that she die’ The first openly trans woman in the Russian army, her Ukrainian boyfriend, and their fight to keep her out of the war
- ‘Let’s find out if they’re spies’ Pegasus spyware was used to target seven more journalists and activists in the E.U.
In 2024, Russian courts issued a total of 81 administrative fines to journalists and readers of independent media deemed “undesirable” by Russian authorities, Mediazona estimates. Meduza accounted for the largest number of these cases (45 fines), followed by Radio Liberty (12 protocols) and Dozhd (nine protocols). These fines typically target journalists or experts who were in some way involved in the creation of media materials. Those penalized include Meduza journalists Andrey Pertsev, Elizaveta Antonova, Svetlana Reiter, Anton Khitrov, and others.