Pregnant journalist in Moscow arrested for ‘referendums’

Science journalist Asya Kazantseva, who previously participated in protests, said on Facebook that she had been arrested at Pionerskaya metro station “by cameras” (the facial recognition system installed in the Moscow metro - notes Meduza).

Kazantseva, who is late in her pregnancy, says that the police first told her the arrest was “as a conscript,” but then said that it was “because of the referendums.”

According to Kazantseva, they took her to the Filevsky Park police station for, as she suggested, an “educational conversation.”

Asya Kazantseva, as well as some other people who previously participated in protests against the war in Ukraine, have been arrested using the facial recognition system which was installed in the subway on June 12 - Russia Day. According to Kazantseva, the police required her to write an explanatory letter saying that she had been “given a preventive conversation about the fact that people with administrative arrests in the past should not enter the subway on Russia Day.”

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