Andrey Grishin

Resident of Magadan. Worked in the regional editorial office of Argumenty i Fakty. In 2016, he became editor-in-chief of the municipal newspaper Vecherniy Magadan. Nine months later, Grishin was fired because of a Facebook post where he criticised Vladimir Safronkov, Russia's deputy permanent representative to the UN, who aggressively addressed a colleague from the UK at a session. After that, Grishin created the information portal VESMA. In 2019, he was beaten in the entranceway. The attackers were detained, they said that the attack was ordered by a local deputy. A criminal case was opened, the attackers received a non-custodial sentence. In February 2023, a case was opened against Grishin for spreading deliberately false information about the Russian Armed Forces, according to him - because of a certain post in a Telegram channel. He left Russia. Later he heard a regional prosecutor say that there were 16 episodes in the case. According to official information, the case was opened in March 2023 under the 1st part of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code against an unidentified person, and in November 2023 the case was opened under the 2nd part of the same article, also against an unidentified person. In June 2023, the VESMA portal was included in the register of "foreign agents". In August 2023 and January 2024, Grishin was fined under the administrative article on evasion of the duties of a "foreign agent" as a founder of the portal because the publications did not have the "foreign agent" labelling. In April 2024, a criminal case was opened against him under a similar article. On 2 November 2024, Grishin was arrested in absentia in a joint criminal case under the 2nd part of the article on "fakes" and under the article on evasion of duties of a "foreign agent". Later it became known that his case was merged with the case of another Magadan journalist, Kirill Belorukov, who co-operated with VESMA.