Having served two one-and-a-half-year sentences in seven criminal cases in 2013-2016,…

Having served two one-and-a-half-year sentences in seven criminal cases in 2013-2016, and recognized by human rights activists as a political prisoner, Rostov journalist Sergei Reznik, who emigrated from Russia in 2019, again “picked up” political compounds in his homeland. In addition to the newfangled articles “Rehabilitation of Nazism” and “Dissemination of fakes about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” already filed against the journalist, the Rostov security forces added a third one to him. This time, a purely journalistic criminal offense – Art. 163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Extortion”. Thus, a unique leader of the “underworld” of emigrated journalists was identified in the Russian media.

Against the background of the total, and sometimes far-fetched persecution of journalists and social activists by Russian law enforcement agencies, Europe has already begun to be extremely reluctant to hand over real criminals to the Russian authorities. By settling some personal scores with each of the individually persecuted social activists, security forces in the regions create an extremely negative background surrounding the fact of any persecution of citizens by Russian security forces. Thus, an extremely negative attitude of foreign colleagues towards security forces from Russia is being formed.