Mikhail Afanasyev, founder of the independent regional news outlet Novy Fokus in Russia's Republic of Khakassia, turned 50 inside Penal Colony No. 35 in Abakan in July 2026. He works in the prison, reads books and continues to write letters. In correspondence published by Novaya Gazeta in February, he described a dream in which a crying infant appeared in the workshop where he worked; he picked up the child and tried to comfort him. Afanasyev has five children. His wife Elena and the two youngest are now outside Russia. He is serving five and a half years for publishing a report about eleven National Guard riot police officers who refused to participate in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
From electrician to investigative reporter
Afanasyev was born on July 12, 1976. He trained as an electrician in Abakan and entered journalism in the 1990s, initially writing about drug trafficking. Over the years he investigated regional corruption, misconduct by law enforcement, illegal gold mining and other stories rarely welcomed by the people in power. In 2005 he founded Novy Fokus, a small independent news outlet covering Khakassia and neighbouring parts of Siberia.
For Afanasyev, reporting was a way to intervene when official procedures failed ordinary people. That approach brought legal pressure. Mediazona reported that at least fourteen criminal cases had been opened against him before the prosecution that began in 2022, largely arising from his work about local officials, but none resulted in a conviction. This is the outlet's historical count, not an independent audit of all the archived proceedings.
His work also gained recognition well beyond the region. Afanasyev received the Andrei Sakharov Award for Journalism as an Act twice and became the first foreign recipient of an award for freedom of expression from the Swedish Publicists' Association. The recognition did not shield him from prosecution, but it reflected the wider significance of reporting conducted far from Moscow's national media.
The hydroelectric disaster and a previous attempt to silence him
In August 2009, after the disaster at the Sayano–Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station that killed 75 people, Afanasyev published information supplied by residents and relatives of people missing in the flooded turbine hall. He called attention to fears that some people might still be alive and urged emergency services to investigate the reports rather than dismiss them.
The authorities responded by opening a criminal defamation case. Computers were seized, and officials portrayed his questions about the rescue operation as the spread of panic. The case was discontinued days later for lack of a criminal offence. Novaya Gazeta's contemporary reporting described the interrogations and the authorities' attempts to characterise the journalist's words as a harmful influence on the public. The dispute illustrated a recurring pattern in Afanasyev's career: scrutiny of officials could quickly become scrutiny of the reporter himself.
Eleven men asked him to tell their story
In early April 2022, members of a riot police unit of Russia's National Guard in Khakassia contacted Afanasyev. They described being sent to military exercises in Belarus before receiving orders to cross into Ukraine. According to their account, personnel were inadequately supplied, and Russian security units moving towards Kyiv suffered serious losses. Eleven officers refused to continue participating in the invasion. They were returned to Khakassia and dismissed from their jobs.
Afanasyev understood that publishing the story could expose him to prosecution under newly enacted laws punishing information about the Russian military that contradicted official statements. On social media, he explained that he could not simply refuse to help people who had asked him to tell their story. On April 4, 2022, Novy Fokus published his report about the eleven riot police officers who had refused to take part in what Russian authorities called the “special military operation.”
The piece gave a voice to people directly involved in the early weeks of the war. Material from the subsequent investigation, later published by other outlets, confirmed that some National Guard officers had indeed refused orders and been dismissed. Those records do not independently establish every detail or casualty figure in Afanasyev's original reporting, but they do corroborate the central story of the eleven men who declined to fight.
Detention, imprisonment and the closure of Novy Fokus
On April 13, 2022, officers searched Afanasyev's home and his mother's home, seized documents and equipment and questioned his wife. He was detained that day and remanded in custody on April 15. Investigators charged him under Article 207.3, Part 2(a), of Russia's Criminal Code, accusing him of disseminating allegedly knowingly false information about the armed forces while using his professional position. Afanasyev denied wrongdoing.
On September 7, 2023, a court in Abakan sentenced him to five years and six months in a general-regime penal colony, followed by a two-and-a-half-year ban on publishing material in the media and online. Khakassia's Supreme Court upheld the sentence on December 18, 2023, and a cassation court left it in force on July 25, 2024.
On September 28, 2023, a court ordered the liquidation of Novy Fokus. The punishment thus reached beyond one journalist: a news outlet Afanasyev had built over nearly two decades disappeared, depriving local residents of a platform for investigations into their authorities and security agencies.
Memorial's political prisoners support project recognised Afanasyev as a political prisoner on June 22, 2022, before the trial was completed. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) includes him in its database of imprisoned journalists and connects the prosecution directly to his reporting on the war. Their assessments place the case in the broader suppression of independent journalism in Russia.
The impact on his family
The consequences of the prosecution have been severe for Afanasyev's wife and children. In February 2026, Novaya Gazeta columnist Alexei Tarasov reported that Afanasyev's wife Elena had left Russia with the couple's two youngest children. According to that account, the family lost their apartment, faced restrictions on savings that were subsequently reversed by a court, and endured pressure on Elena's employment and threats concerning the children's prospects. Afanasyev himself urged them to leave for their safety.
Family contact was also restricted. Novaya Gazeta reported that he had not been granted calls or visits with his wife and children. These were circumstances described by the publication as of February 2026; it is not possible to confirm whether the restrictions subsequently changed. Yet separation from his children is already a profound consequence that appears nowhere in the wording of a criminal sentence.
Letters from prison and work in the pickling workshop
Afanasyev has continued writing from Penal Colony No. 35. Novaya Gazeta published his correspondence in 2023, 2024 and again in 2026. He wrote about fellow inmates, acts of solidarity, exhaustion after long shifts and the books he managed to read. In a February 2026 letter, he described working in a prison pickling workshop, sometimes returning so late that there was time for little more than a short conversation and sleep.
After one such shift, he dreamed of a young child crawling alone through the workshop. In the dream, he picked up the infant and held him close. Afanasyev wrote of the intensity of the feeling that followed. The episode is a rare glimpse of the human being behind the labels “convicted” and “serving a sentence.” Outside prison, his own children are growing up without him at home.
His letters also reflect on life after the war, the choices people may face when they are released and the possibility of retaining compassion under harsh conditions. Prison has not ended his practice of observing and interpreting the world; it has changed the form of his work from investigations and on-the-ground reporting to correspondence and testimony.
Seeking less restrictive conditions
In October 2024, lawyer Vladimir Vasin requested that the remainder of Afanasyev's sentence be replaced with compulsory labour outside a penal colony. The Abakan City Court rejected the request on November 22. CPJ later reported, citing media rights lawyer Galina Arapova, that Afanasyev's health had been described as stable in November 2024 and that his defence lawyer was visiting regularly. There is no more recent independently verified clinical information in the sources reviewed.
Afanasyev turned 50 on July 12, 2026. The Yabloko political party, of which he is a member, marked his birthday with a public message of solidarity and a call for his release. Colleagues and supporters continue to write to him. Memorial and FACTUM's list of persecuted journalists both still place him in Penal Colony No. 35 in Abakan.
What his case reveals
Throughout his career, Afanasyev focused on people without easy access to public attention: residents of Khakassia, those affected by a disaster, people seeking redress and security officers prepared to describe events that their superiors would rather keep out of the news. One of those stories resulted in the imprisonment of its author and the destruction of his outlet. Memorial and CPJ regard the case as part of a broader attack on press freedom following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
International human rights standards protect the right to seek and share information of public concern, including reporting on the armed forces and security institutions. Jailing a journalist over such reporting calls for scrutiny under the requirements of necessity and proportionality, rather than a narrow focus on the wording of a domestic criminal offence. That is why independent press freedom and human rights organisations have called for an end to politically motivated prosecutions of journalists.
As of October 22, 2026, the latest substantial published correspondence with Afanasyev found in this review dates to February. The July birthday statement shows that his supporters remain active, while Memorial continues to list Penal Colony No. 35 as his place of detention. No verified later report of his release or a change in his sentence has been identified. Updated contact information should be checked against his FACTUM profile before sending correspondence.