The ministry's database entry for Kovalev was spotted by Mediazona, which did not specify under which article he is being sought.
Kovalev headed Meduza's investigations department from 2019 to 2022. Before that he worked with InoSMI.ru, where he served as editor-in-chief, as well as with Wired, GQ and The Guardian. He has won the Redkollegia journalism award three times, for reporting on corruption in the administration of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, on the so-called "Putin's palace" near Gelendzhik, and on war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kovalev left the country, according to Radio Liberty, on March 4, 2022. Abroad, he took up open-source data work for the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which defends journalists and monitors human rights violations.
In 2025, Kovalev published an investigation into how, in the occupied city of Mariupol, the homes of residents who died or fled are declared "ownerless" and transferred to the state or resold. The project's description states that Russia's crimes in Mariupol did not end with the shelling of residential districts and are now different war crimes, "far less visible and greatly stretched out over time."
In December 2024, the Justice Ministry added Kovalev to its register of "foreign agents." In 2025 and 2026, administrative protocols were drawn up against him twice for failing to comply with "foreign agent" requirements.