Journalist and political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov confirms that he has left Russia ‘for the foreseeable future’
Russian journalist and political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov confirmed on July 12 that he has left Yekaterinburg and is now living in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he plans to stay there “for the foreseeable future.”
In a Facebook post, Krasheninnikov explained that he had initially planned a short-term stay abroad, but “the development of the situation in Russia in recent months implies that there’s no need to rush home.”
In conversation with the independent television network Dozhd (TV Rain), Krasheninnikov clarified that he left Russia after being released from jail in August 2020. The journalist was sentenced to seven days behind bars over a recording posted on Telegram, in which he insulted Constitutional Court judges. Krasheninnikov said he decided to clear up any “ambiguity” concerning his whereabouts, because some people knew of his departure from Russia, while others did not.
“I don’t know what would happen to me now if I had stayed in Russia, because [of] what happened last fall after [Alexey] Navalny’s poisoning [and] what happened in the winter when Navalny returned — a repressive campaign began. In Yekaterinburg, several people received not seven days, but 30 days administrative arrest, moreover, [these were] people who had just some remote connection to Navalny’s headquarters. On the whole, I understand that I wouldn’t be able to stand aside […] These were the circumstances and I decided why tempt fate? I’m not a boy anymore: on July 16, I’ll turn 45 years old. And at this age, the last thing you want is to end up under investigation, to be dragged in for interrogation and so on.”
Fyodor Krashenninikov has twice faced misdemeanor charges for insulting the Russian government. In the fall of 2019, he was fined 30,000 rubles (about $400 by today’s exchange rate) for a Telegram post criticizing “Putinist judges.” In the summer of 2020, he was sentenced to seven days in jail for insulting Constitutional Court judges.
