On Monday afternoon, Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky District Court arrested in absentia TV Rain journalist and former IStories employee Ekaterina Fomina and IStories’ editor-in-chief Roman Anin.
The journalists are accused of spreading so-called “fakes” about the Russian army with the motive of political hatred. The Russian authorities call “fake” any information that does not fit in with their propaganda campaign or does not correspond to the official position of the Kremlin.
The sanction under this “crime” is imprisonment for five to ten years. And such criminal cases have long been a tool of censorship and a way to put pressure on journalists, politicians, human rights activists and ordinary citizens. In the morning, the Ministry of Internal Affairs put Anin and Fomina on the wanted list.
According to TASS, the case against Ekaterina Fomina was initiated because of the publication of a video version of an interview almost two years ago, in which Russian army Gefreiter Daniil Frolkin confessed to killing a Ukrainian civilian.
What is reported in the investigation?
In August 2022, IStories released an investigation into war crimes in Andreevka near Kiev, where Russian soldiers killed civilians. In a conversation with Ekaterina Fomina, military officer Daniil Frolkin confessed to killing civilian Ruslan Yaremchuk in Ukraine and gave details of his service in the war zone.
As Frolkin’s colleague told IStories, the commanders, particularly Omurbekov, ordered to kill “everyone with whom you find cell phones.” In addition, he said, the colonel ordered the shelling of several vehicles carrying civilians.
Frolkin later told IStories that he wants the command of his brigade to be punished and told who exactly gave orders to shoot Ukrainian civilians.
“I understand I can be jailed for this information," he says. "Not even for all the shit I did in the Ukraine. But for that information [about the command]. I only want to confess everything and explain what is happening in our country. I think it would be better if this war had never happened,” he said.
After the publication of the material, Frolkin was prosecuted for military “fakes” — in March 2023, a military court sentenced him to five and a half years of probation.
What is wrong with the accusation?
The TASS agency wrote in January 2024 that Ekaterina Fomina, according to the prosecution’s version, blackmailed a military officer — a case of “fakes” about the Russian Armed Forces for selfish motives as part of a group of persons was opened against the journalist.
According to TASS, Frolkin allegedly gave Fomina “an interview with inaccurate information about the actions of the Russian Armed Forces” in exchange for non-disclosure of some compromising information about him. This does not correspond to reality.
Fomina herself says that she could not have any compromising information about Frolkin, as she learned about him only in the course of her work and had only information from open sources.
“In the interview, Frolkin himself described where he was in March 2022 and what duties he carried out, as well as the looting of his commanders. After the interview, he wrote to me, offered ‘more information’ and insisted that we call each other under recording and with video. It was then that he confessed to the murder,” Fomina told IStories.
In addition, during the court hearings on his own “fakes” case in the Khabarovsk Garrison Military Court, Frolkin never once mentioned Fomina’s role or talked about pressure. His testimony in court was consistent with what he had previously said in an interview with IStories.
The case file against Fomina, which appeared on the court’s website today, shows that she is accused of spreading “fakes” motivated by political hatred. The paragraphs on “group of persons” and “selfish motives” have disappeared.
What else is known?
In November 2023, the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU wrote that the Dorogomilovsky Investigative Department of the Moscow Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against “unidentified persons” among the IStories journalists. It was prompted by videos posted on the IStories’ YouTube channel — including Ekaterina Fomina’s investigation about Frolkin.
The IStories’ editor-in-chief Roman Anin does not know the details of the criminal case against him.
It is not yet known what the reason for his prosecution was. But in the past, Anin was a witness in a criminal case that was opened after Novaya Gazeta published his journalistic investigation “Princess Olga’s Secret” about a luxury yacht used by the wife of Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, one of the most influential people in Vladimir Putin’s entourage. The case was opened for “violation of privacy” back in 2016. In 2021, it involved searching Anin’s Moscow apartment for seven hours and taking him to the Investigative Committee for an overnight interrogation. The further fate of this criminal proceeding is unknown to IStories.
The video version of Ekaterina Fomina’s investigation into the massacre of civilians in the Kiev Oblast can be viewed on YouTube. The text version of the story is on our website.
Roman Anin’s investigation about the yacht used by Igor Sechin’s now ex-wife can be read here (in Russian). You can read about an old criminal case initiated after this publication here.