Yevgenia Baltatarova

Affiliated media: YouTube channel "Zhenya Baltatarova", Journalist, Blogger

Incident date: March 7, 2022

Attack type:

Warnings, pre-trial complaints, questioning and other extra-judicial actions

Who attacked: Authorities

Location: Russia, Republic of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude

Additional information:

Buryat journalist Yevgenia Baltatarova left Russia. As the reason, she cited the pressure of the security forces – the search and the fear of a criminal case under the new law on fake news with a maximum penalty of 15 years of imprisonment. Baltatarova wrote about this in her Telegram channel. On March 1, a journalist's flat was searched. The formal reason was the theft of her Telegram channel: earlier, Baltatarova had lost access to it; later, the fraudsters on her channel started to post publications about cryptocurrency. The equipment was seized from Baltatarova, and afterwards, there was a «conversation» with the investigator. «It [was] just a pretext to gather evidence and place me behind bars for 15 years under the new fake news law. I have reliable sources who warned me about it», – the journalist wrote. The journalist spoke out against the war in Ukraine.