Russian journalist convicted of cooperating with a foreign organization and jailed for 4 years

A journalist who once worked as a freelance reporter for the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was convicted Tuesday by a court in far eastern Russia of cooperating with a foreign organization and sentenced to four years in prison.

Nika Novak, 24, was found guilty after a closed trial in the Zabaikalsky Regional Court in the city of Chita of cooperating with a representative of a foreign media outlet and being paid to prepare “false materials” to discredit the Russian military and government agencies. The court said Novak’s actions were aimed at damaging and destabilizing Russia.

The human rights organization Memorial has described Novak as a political prisoner.

It’s not clear why Novak was arrested, but she previously did freelance work for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, according to Siberia Realities, which is part of RFE/RL. She also was the editor-in-chief of Zab.ru, a news site in Chita, a city in eastern Russia that is closer to Japan than Moscow.

“We condemn today’s unjust conviction and sentencing of RFE/RL journalist Nika Novak in Russia. These politically motivated charges are intended to silence individual reporters and cause a chilling effect. We call for Nika’s immediate release to her family," RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a comment to The Associated Press.

Novak was arrested in Moscow in December 2023 and sent more than 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) east to Chita for her trial.

Russia has used foreign agent laws to crack down on freedom of speech and independent media, including RFE/RL.

RFE/RL was told by Russian authorities in 2017 to register as a foreign agent, but it has challenged Moscow’s use of foreign agent laws in the European Court of Human Rights. The organization has been fined millions of dollars by Russi and was outlawed in the country in February.

Alsu Kurmasheva, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist with U.S citizenship was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military and was later released as part of a prisoner swap deal with the West.

According to OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading rights groups that tracks political arrests, more than 1,000 people have been charged in criminal cases related to speaking or acting out against the war in Ukraine.

But Memorial noted that Novak previously appeared to have made comments on her social media pages that supported the war.

In a post published on her behalf Tuesday on the social media platform Telegram, Novak described being taken to Chita from Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison on a flight that lasted about seven hours. She also said she is not allowed to contact her mother, who is listed as a witness in the case, and suggested her meetings and conversations were wiretapped.

“I feel some pressure, but I try not to lose heart,” she wrote in the post.