Lawyer Mikhail Biryukov told the BBC that the case had been terminated. According to him, the investigative team from the Investigative Committee's central office learned of the decision from the investigator, and the official order was sent by mail. Three sources close to the philanthropist confirmed the information to the BBC.
"Lida was released for lack of evidence," one of the sources told the BBC. A Telegram channel run by Moniava's support group said the lawyer was notified by an investigator from the central Investigative Committee.
Moniava was detained on September 2 after a morning search of her apartment. The criminal case was prompted by a post published on her Telegram channel on February 24, 2023, the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In it, Moniava recounted the stories of Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian attacks, including a Russian missile strike on a building in Odesa, and urged donations to the "Dom s Mayakom" refugee assistance fund.
The Investigative Committee said at the time that Moniava had publicly spread knowingly false information about the actions of Russian servicemen against civilians in Ukraine. The charge she faced carried a sentence of five to 10 years in prison.
On September 3, more than 200 people gathered outside Moscow's Simonovsky District Court, where a preventive measure was being decided. Among them were patients and staff of the hospice, Vera fund founder Nyuta Federmesser, the parents of politician Ilya Yashin, and former Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov. The court declined to send Moniava to a pre-trial detention center and imposed a set of restrictions: not to leave home between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., not to communicate with witnesses in the case, and not to use social media.
A few days later, Moniava said she was stepping down as director of the Dom s Mayakom hospice and leaving its board. She said this was meant to protect the organization's work. "I want to ask all of you, if possible, not to abandon 'Dom s Mayakom,' to donate money so the hospice can keep working," Moniava said at the time. She also said she did not intend to leave Russia, though she received much advice to go.
Before the case was dropped, Moniava said she expected a trial on the merits in two to three months, followed by "most likely a colony term of five to 10 years." Earlier this year she was fined 45,000 rubles under the administrative article on "discrediting" the Russian army, over three Telegram posts, including one about the death of a sixth-grader and his parents in Sumy in a Russian attack in April 2025.
Moniava, 38, is the founder of a charitable fund and the Dom s Mayakom children's hospice, which since 2018 have helped seriously ill children and young people up to the age of 30. In 2022 she signed an open letter to Vladimir Putin calling for an end to the war. After the invasion began, Moniava launched a separate fund to help refugees from Ukraine, Russia's border regions and Nagorno-Karabakh. In August 2025 she announced it was suspending operations.