FACTUM stories
35 stories
FACTUM's own reporting on people persecuted on political grounds and on the cases against them: verdicts, timelines, context. Newest first.
September 28, 2026
Asya Zolnikova: from a fine over an architecture article to arrest in absentia
An architecture journalist was first fined over a Meduza article on how wars reshape cities, then arrested in absentia in an “undesirable organization” case.
September 28, 2026
Ruslan Leviev: 11 years in absentia for war analysis
The founder of Conflict Intelligence Team was sentenced in absentia to 11 years for his war-analysis broadcasts. How Russia built its “fake news” case against him.
September 21, 2026
Mansur Movlaev: the man no one can deport
Russia is not asking for him over the leaks he sent to a Chechen opposition channel. It is asking for him for extortion, and that distinction is the whole case. Kazakhstan says a treaty obliges it to comply; its own criminal code says otherwise. What the Chisinau Convention, the Convention against Torture and two UN rulings on diplomatic assurances actually require.
September 17, 2026
Seven Years for Treason: What the Closed Trial of Philosopher Nikolai Zyuzev Left Unanswered
A 70-year-old scholar of Pitirim Sorokin was sentenced to seven years for high treason after a closed trial in Komi. The sentence itself is legally explicable. What the published record does not show is how his research, conferences and grants became a crime against the state.
September 14, 2026
15 Years for a Retired Journalist: What the Levchenko Verdict Breaks in the Geneva Conventions
Iryna Levchenko was detained on a street in occupied Melitopol on 6 May 2023, shortly after photographing her own city. Her husband was released fifteen months later; she was not. Three years of transfers between Donetsk, Mariupol, Simferopol and Krasnodar, a charge her family learned of only in the third year, a closed trial her own lawyer could not fully access — and fifteen years. An analysis of what this case breaks in the Fourth Geneva Convention.