Vasilisa Shishkina

Vasilisa Viktorovna Shishkina is a journalist from Ulan-Ude in the Republic of Buryatia. She worked for the regional newspaper Nomer Odin for many years. Her journalism career there can be traced back at least to the early 2010s: in 2012 she received a regional journalism award for her reporting. She later worked as an editor at the publication, reportedly from 2016 to 2024. Her work covered social issues, domestic violence and, after 2022, reported violations of the rights of mobilized servicemen from Buryatia.

Shishkina was detained on July 17, 2025. She was subsequently charged with high treason under Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code. The case was heard behind closed doors because the authorities classified the evidence as containing state secrets. Her lawyer, Vasily Dubkov, has said he is legally unable to disclose the substance of the prosecution. No reliable public source therefore establishes that the case concerns any particular article or other piece of Shishkina’s journalism.

On May 21, 2026, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Buryatia, with Judge Timur Tsyrenov presiding, sentenced Shishkina to 12 years in a general-regime penal colony followed by one year of restricted freedom.

On August 6, 2026, the Fifth Court of Appeal in Novosibirsk upheld the sentence. Judge Yevgeny Serbov changed only the calculation of time spent in pre-trial detention, ordering that one day in detention count as one day of the prison term rather than one and a half.

The latest publicly confirmed reports placed Shishkina in Novosibirsk Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 1 pending transfer.