Moscow’s Tagansky District Court has begun a hearing into a criminal case against Valeria Kichigina, an editor at the independent Russian-language TV channel Dozhd, over her 2023 Instagram post marking the 15th anniversary of the August 2008 war, in which she wrote that “20% of Georgia is occupied by Russia.”
Kichigina is charged over two social media posts: the Instagram story about the 2008 war and a repost of an article about the killings in Bucha. According to case materials cited by TV Dozhd, the investigation began in 2023 in the city of Ufa after authorities discovered the Instagram post, though the criminal case was formally opened only in November 2024. In January 2025, police searched the journalist’s family home, and in March, she was arrested in absentia and placed on a wanted list.
Kichigina says the prosecution against her is due to her journalistic work and her coverage of the “Baymak case,” prosecutions linked to the 2024 mass protests in Russia’s Bashkortostan region.
Investigators claim Kichigina “undermined the authority and discredited the Russian Armed Forces in the eyes of society, causing citizens who became acquainted with the above-mentioned publications and videos to experience feelings of anxiety, fear, concern, and insecurity toward the state.” The journalist faces up to ten years in prison.
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The post Dozhd Editor Tried in Absentia Over Post Saying ‘20% of Georgia Is Occupied by Russia’ first appeared on The South Caucasus News – SouthCaucasusNews.com.
The post Dozhd Editor Tried in Absentia Over Post Saying ‘20% of Georgia Is Occupied by Russia’ first appeared on The World Web Times – worldwebtimes.com.
