Alexandra Bayazitova, the author of the Telegram channel 'Hellish Grannies,' was released from prison on July 27 after serving four years on an extortion conviction involving a vice president of Promsvyazbank.

Video of Bayazitova after her release was published by the outlet Post. In the footage, the journalist says: 'A very strange place: when already convicted criminals are placed at the disposal of those not yet convicted. And then society thinks: Hmm... Why aren't they reforming?'

Bayazitova worked as an economic correspondent for Kommersant and Izvestia and collaborated with Life.ru. Since 2017, she ran an economic YouTube blog and the Telegram channel 'Hellish Grannies.'

She was detained in summer 2022. According to the investigation, she and media manager Olga Arkharova extorted 1.2 million rubles from Ushakov in exchange for refraining from negative publications about him — a so-called 'block on negativity.' This was one of the first cases against Telegram channel authors accused of extorting bankers or officials.

In November 2023, Bayazitova was sentenced to five years in a general-regime penal colony. Arkharova received four and a half years in prison, while PR specialist Inna Churilova received a suspended sentence. Ushakov asked the court not to impose actual prison terms, but the court did not heed his opinion.

Bayazitova did not admit guilt. She suggested that the criminal prosecution may have been prompted by her articles about theft in state defense contracts, in which, she said, Promsvyazbank was implicated.

The journalist has diabetes and several other illnesses. After her detention, she requested house arrest because her sick mother was dependent on her. However, she was placed in a pretrial detention center, despite several media figures loyal to Russian authorities speaking in her defense.

In April 2025, she was denied parole. In September 2025, a court commuted her sentence, replacing the unserved portion with forced labor, but the prosecutor's office appealed, and a regional court upheld the original verdict.

Human rights activist Eva Merkacheva wrote that Bayazitova was treated 'extremely harshly,' and in the months before her release, she was denied the ability to call relatives. Speaking to the outlet Moskovsky Komsomolets, Bayazitova said she regretted not being released on parole. She attributed the denials to 'resentment' from the colony's administration: 'I filed lawsuits because, let's say, not everything is well in this institution.'