The woman, identified by Mediazona as Noya Cohen (a pseudonym), was born in Ukraine and holds its citizenship, but her family has long lived in Israel. She began studying at a Russian university in 2021 and traveled to the country on a student visa issued to her as an Israeli citizen.

In the summer of 2025 she flew from Europe to Moscow via Minsk. At Sheremetyevo airport her phone was taken and she was led away for checks: she waited about seven hours for questioning, with nowhere to sleep, and could not eat non-kosher food at the airport for religious reasons, she told Mediazona, which discovered the court decision in her case.

According to her account, a border guard asked about her attitude to the war, to Russia and to local politics. Cohen answered evasively, saying much was also happening in Israel and she was more worried about her family there. Her answers did not convince him.

"He says: but your phone says otherwise: here you listen to 'foreign agents': Monetochka, Morgenshtern, Noize MC. You have 'likes' on Zelensky, Alexei Navalny, on posts connected to the Ukrainian army... Though I don't even know what I liked there. And of course, posts connected to LGBT," she recounts the interrogation.

Cohen tried to explain that she had not called for anything and that the likes merely reflected her views. According to her, the officer replied that pressing 'like' is already an action. "He says, forget LGBT, we have plenty of those, they sit quieter than water, lower than grass, but the stuff connected to Ukraine... and tell me, Israel and Palestine — who attacked whom?" the woman recalls. She supported her country, and the conversation moved to the other conflict.

According to Mediazona, the court decision states that Cohen's phone had "approving marks installed on publications of foreign agents, numerous approving marks on publications connected to LGBT ideology," and that "subscriptions were found to channels in which participants discredit the Russian Federation." It also asserts that during questioning the student denied her likes and "misled the officers." An official of the FSB border control unit interpreted all this as a "threat to the security of the Russian Federation."

Early in the morning she was told she would not be allowed into Russia. She remained at Sheremetyevo until evening: border guards and the airline Belavia argued over who should pay for her ticket for expulsion to Minsk. "Usually people have a return ticket, its date is changed and the person effectively flies at their own expense, but I didn't have one — by law the border guards should have put me on the flight themselves, but they refused and demanded it from Belavia, and they say, why at our expense, you're the ones deporting her?" Cohen says. In the end she offered to buy the ticket herself.

Before her expulsion she was handed an act barring her from the country. She could not appeal the expulsion through a lawyer acting under a power of attorney: shortly before the final hearing, the FSB brought a ruling banning her entry to the court.

Cohen later planned to fly from Israel to Belarus. The Israeli security service warned her that a notification had come from Belarusian border guards: she would not be allowed into that country either.