Russia's largest publishing group, Eksmo-AST, fired or forced out employees who refused to comply with tightened censorship rules following a criminal case against book publishers, the company's president said.

President Oleg Novikov said in an interview with the state television program "Vesti" that some staff were dismissed and others resigned after the company revised its internal guidelines and tightened regulations in response to the so-called "book publishers' case" — a criminal prosecution of publishing employees accused of distributing LGBT literature.

"Some couldn't work. We have employees who resigned. We fired some ourselves because the person was not ready or, one could even say, did not want to meet the requirements that the legislation imposes today," Novikov said.

Every book now undergoes a pre-publication check against 10 criteria. "These are not only non-traditional relationships, but also various prohibitions. There was, in particular, a law banning the propaganda of drugs," Novikov explained.

Due to the new laws, staff had to review not only new books but also those published over the company's 20-year history. Artificial intelligence is used for preliminary screening: neural networks flag pages and passages for editors to examine. The group has conducted about 20,000 internal reviews, and another 600 books were sent to external specialists.

The "book publishers' case" was opened in May 2025 under the article on organizing the activities of an extremist organization (Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code). The defendants are employees of the Individuum and Popcorn Books publishing houses — Dmitry Protopopov, Pavel Ivanov, and Artyom Vakhlyaev — over the distribution of LGBT-themed books. In the spring, several Eksmo executives, including the publishing house's general director Yevgeny Kapyev, were detained as part of the case and released after questioning. Two defendants, Ivanov and Vakhlyaev, have already received four-year suspended sentences.

Eksmo-AST is Russia's largest publishing group, controlling an estimated 75 to 90 percent of the fiction market. Its imprints include Corpus, Redaktsiya Yeleny Shubinoy, Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, and Azbuka-Atticus.