Olga Arkharova

Affiliated media: Telegram channel Infernal Grandmas, Media manager

Incident date: November 27, 2023

Attack type:

• Court trial

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Mediazona

Location: Russia, Moscow, Moscow

Additional information:

The Basmanny District Court of Moscow sentenced Olga Arkharova, media manager of the Telegram channel Infernal Grandmas, to four and a half years of imprisonment in a case of large-scale extortion (Paragraph B of Part 3 of Article 163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Journalist Alexandra Bayazitova was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in this case. The third defendant, Inna Churilova, received a suspended sentence after a deal with the investigation. According to the investigation, Bayazitova and Arkharova demanded RUB 1.2 million from Promsvyazbank vice-president Alexander Ushakov for «extending the block on negativity» in the Telegram channel Infernal Grandmas. Both were in a pre-trial detention centre since August 2022.