New York, April 15, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Russian authorities to immediately release Russian journalists Antonina Favorskaya, Artyom Krieger, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, who were sentenced by a Moscow court on Tuesday to five and a half years in prison on extremism charges.
The journalists were all accused of association with the anti-corruption movement of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last year in a Russian prison colony in the Arctic at age 47. All four denied the charges.
“The sentencing of four journalists at once to 5.5 years in prison is blatant testimony to Russian authorities’ profound contempt for press freedom,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Russian authorities should immediately release Antonina Favorskaya, Artyom Krieger, Konstantin Gabov and Sergey Karelin, drop all charges against them, and stop jailing journalists in retaliation for their work.”
The court also banned them from publishing any content on the internet for three years after they complete their prison sentences.
Russian authorities detained Favorskaya, a journalist with the independent news outlet SOTAvision, in Moscow on March 17, 2024, and charged her 11 days later with making and editing videos and publications and collecting material for Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which Russian authorities have banned as extremist.
Favorskava’s case was later combined with the cases against Krieger, another SOTAvision journalist, as well as freelance journalists Karelin and Gabov, who are also accused of cooperation with Navalny’s FBK. The trial of the four started behind closed doors on October 2, 2024.
Krieger was detained in Moscow on June 18, 2024. SOTAvision rejected the charges against him, saying that he “has never been an activist and was not affiliated with any parties or movements.”
Karelin, a freelance videographer who has worked for The Associated Press and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), was detained in the northern region of Murmansk on April 26, 2024. Gabov, a freelance journalist who has worked with Reuters, German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was detained the next day in Moscow.
CPJ emailed the branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee in Moscow for comment but received no response.
Russia is the world’s fifth-worst jailer of journalists, with CPJ’s most recent prison census documenting at least 30 journalists in prison on December 1, 2024.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.