SOTAvision journalist Antonina Favorskaya is serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence in Penal Colony No. 3 in Russia’s Kostroma Region under Article 282.1(2) of the Criminal Code. Prosecutors tied her to Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation through video production and street interviews; the trial was closed. By September 11, 2026, she had spent more than 82 days in punishment cells after refusing prison sewing work.

Antonina Yuryevna Kravtsova, better known as Antonina Favorskaya, came to journalism after several years in theater. In an interview with Novaya Gazeta from pretrial detention, she said that in 2012 she defended a graduation thesis on protest cinema in Russia, later studied at Mosfilm courses, worked at the MOST theater studio, and graduated from GITIS, the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she left the theater, spent several months helping Ukrainian refugees, began attending trials of political prisoners, and met a SOTAvision journalist while covering a hearing in the case of opposition politician Ilya Yashin.

At SOTAvision, Favorskaya covered politically sensitive trials, including hearings involving Alexei Navalny and reporting on the conditions of his imprisonment. After Navalny died in February 2024, she traveled to Kharp in Russia’s Arctic north and accompanied his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, as she sought the release of her son’s body. In the FACTUM database, Favorskaya is included among journalists facing political persecution.

Ten days in administrative detention, then a criminal case

Favorskaya was detained in Moscow on March 17, 2024, after visiting Navalny’s grave. The next day, a court sentenced her to ten days of administrative detention for alleged disobedience of police orders. When that term ended, she was detained again, this time in a criminal case. On March 29, a court ordered her held in pretrial detention.

Favorskaya was charged under Part 2 of Article 282.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, which criminalizes participation in an “extremist community.” The press service of Moscow courts described the factual basis of the accusation as gathering material, producing and editing videos, and preparing publications for the Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK, the organization founded by Navalny. Favorskaya denied guilt and said the prosecution was retaliation for her reporting on Navalny. Her case falls into two existing FACTUM categories: extremism cases and cases against Navalny and FBK supporters.

On May 24, 2024, prison authorities placed Favorskaya on a preventive watch list in pretrial detention as a person supposedly inclined toward “extremist ideology,” according to the case chronology maintained by the Political Prisoners Support project of Memorial.

One of her lawyers was removed from the case

On June 5, 2024, investigators removed lawyer Fyodor Sirosh from Favorskaya’s defense team. The investigator argued that Sirosh had participated as counsel in a 2019 questioning of Yevgeny Zamyatin, a lawyer associated with Navalny’s team, in a different episode of the FBK investigation, and that this supposedly created a conflict of interest. Sirosh and Favorskaya’s other lawyer, Yevgenia Grigoryeva, appealed the decision, arguing that the earlier questioning concerned different circumstances and a different criminal charge.

At roughly the same time, there was a separate dispute over Favorskaya’s contact with her family. Investigators initially denied requests for visits, prompting the defense to go to court. While the complaint was pending, the investigator authorized a meeting with Favorskaya’s mother and grandmother. On June 5, the Basmanny District Court terminated the complaint proceedings because permission had already been granted. The court did not rule that the earlier refusals were unlawful.

The trial was closed at the first hearing

Favorskaya and three other journalists went on trial on October 2, 2024, in Moscow’s Nagatinsky District Court. At the first hearing, prosecutors asked the judge to close the proceedings, citing a letter from the Interior Ministry’s anti-extremism center warning of possible provocations and threats to participants. The defense called the letter unsubstantiated and opposed closing the case. The judge nevertheless excluded the press and public from the main proceedings.

Defense lawyers said the case file ran to 52 volumes. Because the proceedings were closed, the public never gained access to the full prosecution narrative or the complete evidentiary record. Mediazona established that, among other witnesses, the court heard from participants in street interviews that had appeared on the Navalny LIVE YouTube channel. The prosecution’s public account also referred to video production and editing. What additional evidence the court relied on to conclude that Favorskaya had entered an extremist community cannot be established from the open record.

Five and a half years

On April 15, 2025, Moscow’s Nagatinsky District Court sentenced Favorskaya to five years and six months in a general-regime penal colony. The three other journalists tried with her received the same sentence. The court also barred them from publishing material online for three years after release.

On December 4, 2025, the Moscow City Court upheld the verdict. The appeal, like the trial itself, was heard without members of the public or the press. The judgment then entered into force.

Family contact under investigative control

The dispute over family visits did not become a separate criminal episode, but it illustrates how tightly investigators controlled Favorskaya’s contact with relatives. Initial requests for visits were denied; permission for her mother and grandmother was granted only after the defense challenged the refusal in court. In prison, Favorskaya later said that the trip to Penal Colony No. 3 was difficult for her elderly grandmother and that telephone contact with relatives was limited.

Memorial, CPJ and RSF call for her release

On May 15, 2024, the Political Prisoners Support project of Memorial published its decision recognizing Favorskaya as a political prisoner. The rights group argues that her prosecution is connected to legitimate journalistic work. FACTUM reflects this designation in its section on people recognized as political prisoners, attributing the assessment to Memorial rather than presenting it as a court finding.

After the verdict, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for all four journalists to be released and for Russia to stop prosecuting journalists for their professional work. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also demanded their release and linked the convictions to pressure on independent journalism.

Penal Colony No. 3: punishment cells, PKT and stricter conditions

On February 17, 2026, SOTAvision reported that Favorskaya had been transferred to Penal Colony No. 3 in Russia’s Kostroma Region. In June, the colony administration classified her as a “malicious violator” after she refused to work in the prison sewing operation, and she was subsequently placed in a punishment cell, known by the Russian acronym SHIZO. On June 19, lawyer Yevgenia Grigoryeva said Favorskaya had been moved to cell-type premises, or PKT, a stricter form of confinement. SOTAvision had initially reported that she was being transferred to strict conditions of detention; the lawyer later clarified that the immediate transfer was to PKT.

The most recent detailed account reviewed by FACTUM was published by SOTAvision on September 27, 2026. According to the outlet, by September 11 Favorskaya had spent more than 82 days in SHIZO in total. The exact cumulative number was no longer clear because she was being moved between punishment cells and stricter detention conditions, and her ability to communicate with the outside world was restricted while she was in isolation. Favorskaya said the disciplinary cycle stemmed from her refusal to report for sewing work. FACTUM found no later confirmed report, as of October 4, that she had been transferred to a different penal colony.

What Article 282.1(2) requires

Favorskaya was not convicted simply for publishing prohibited material, nor under the separate provision governing participation in the activities of an organization formally banned as extremist. She was convicted specifically of participation in an “extremist community” under Part 2 of Article 282.1 of the Russian Criminal Code. In the current text of the law, that offense is punishable, among other penalties, by two to six years of imprisonment. FACTUM checked the text against the current versions available through ConsultantPlus and Garant.

More important than the sentencing range is what Russian Supreme Court guidance says “participation” means. Under the current plenary guidance on extremist crimes, participation can involve joining such a community with the intent to take part in preparing or committing extremist crimes, taking part in their preparation or commission, or performing functional duties that support the community’s activities. The same guidance describes an extremist community as a stable group formed in advance for the preparation or commission of extremist crimes.

The publicly known part of Favorskaya’s case describes activities that look like ordinary newsroom work: gathering material, producing and editing videos, preparing publications, and filming street interviews. Those acts, standing alone, are standard journalistic functions. To sustain a conviction under Article 282.1(2), the prosecution therefore had to prove more than the fact that Favorskaya worked on videos: it had to establish the legally required connection to an extremist community and the corresponding intent.

The court concluded that this connection had been proved, and the conviction survived appeal. No court has found that the case was fabricated. At the same time, because the trial was closed, the public cannot independently assess what evidence the court relied on to establish Favorskaya’s membership, intent, and functional role. The open record contains testimony from participants in street interviews and references to video production, but not the full evidentiary chain. That gap between the demanding legal elements of the offense and the inaccessibility of the evidence is the central problem in evaluating the case from outside the courtroom.

Memorial draws a more definite human-rights conclusion from the available facts: it regards the prosecution as politically motivated and connected to lawful journalistic activity. That is Memorial’s assessment, not a judicial finding.

Journalism and anti-extremism law

Favorskaya’s case also sits within broader international standards on freedom of expression. Journalists are protected in their work of seeking, receiving, and disseminating information on matters of public interest. In April 2026, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media warned that legal harassment, imprisonment of journalists, and the criminalization of journalism create a chilling effect on reporting about matters of public importance.

The OSCE has also warned specifically that overly broad use of anti-extremism legislation can restrict legitimate media work. That concern is directly relevant here because the conduct publicly attributed to Favorskaya overlaps with basic reporting and video-production functions, while the criminal offense requires proof of participation in a criminal community.

UNESCO treats journalist safety as part of the protection of press freedom and, in its work on the protection of journalistic sources, notes that excessively broad national-security and counterterrorism measures can undermine source confidentiality and the public’s access to information. Source protection was not publicly identified as a specific issue in Favorskaya’s prosecution. The broader principle remains relevant, however: authorities must distinguish professional newsgathering and processing of information from a journalist’s participation in the activities of a prosecuted organization.

Context: one sentence for four journalists

Favorskaya was tried alongside three other journalists, and all four received identical sentences. CPJ treats the case as part of a broader pattern of pressure on independent reporters in Russia. In February 2026, reviewing Russia’s record of media repression, the organization again included the four journalists’ convictions among the major cases it was tracking.

At the same time, the case should not be reduced to the formula that Favorskaya was convicted “simply for being a journalist.” Formally, the court found her guilty of participating in an extremist community. The problem is narrower and more concrete: the proceedings were closed, the full evidence has not been made public, and the part of the accusation that is publicly known describes the production of journalistic content. That is why rights and press-freedom groups treat the case as a test of the boundary between prosecuting extremism and criminalizing reporting.

What comes next

After the Moscow City Court ruling of December 4, 2025, the conviction entered into force. In the open sources reviewed by FACTUM through October 4, 2026, we found no report of a final cassation ruling on the conviction. It would therefore be inaccurate to state that a cassation court has already disposed of the case.

The most immediate issue is now the way Favorskaya is serving her sentence in Penal Colony No. 3. By September 2026 she had spent months moving between ordinary and harsher detention conditions amid the dispute over prison sewing work. As long as she remains in custody, information about her treatment may arrive with delays precisely during periods when she is held in SHIZO and has sharply restricted communication.

This article is based on open sources reviewed by FACTUM as of October 4, 2026.