Strings attached. Violinist Asya Sorshneva given three‑year suspended sentence for donating $45 to Navalny’s “extremist” foundation

A Russian court has sentenced 42-year-old violinist Asya Sorshneva to a three-year suspended sentence for financing an “extremist organisation” (Article 282.3, Part 1 of the Criminal Code) over donations to late opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). Mediazona reported from the courtroom.

Sorshneva, who had been under house arrest, pleaded guilty to making seven transfers to the ACF totaling 3,500 rubles (about $45 at the current exchange rate). The prosecution had also requested a non-custodial sentence. Sorshneva, the music curator at the MIRA Center in Suzdal, was separately fined 30,000 rubles in August ($385) for an anti-war post she published on Instagram on February 24, 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun.

Sorshneva’s conviction is the latest in a wave of similar verdicts across Russia. In Podolsk, near Moscow, another woman was recently handed a three-year suspended sentence for a donation to ACF. The penalties vary: a resident of Severodvinsk in the Russian North received two years of compulsory labour for a 2,100-ruble ($27) donation after he first claimed scammers had made the transfer from his card, only to recant and apologize to the court.

Fines are common and often vastly disproportionate to the donation amount. A resident of Yakutsk in Siberia was fined 300,000 rubles ($3,850) for a 1,000-ruble ($13) donation, while a 26-year-old Syrian citizen in Nalchik in the Caucasus was fined 400,000 rubles ($5,150) for a single 900-ruble ($12) transfer; the court also confiscated her iPhone 14 Pro Max as “material evidence”.

In some cases, courts have shown minor leniency. When fining Navalny’s aide and one of ACF leaders Leonid Volkov’s father 300,000 rubles ($3,850), the Yekaterinburg court noted his “understanding of the illegality” and unsubscribing from the recurring payments as a mitigating circumstance. In Kirov, however, a prosecutor appealed a 300,000-ruble fine to demand the court also confiscate the original 1,800-ruble ($23) donation.

While most sentences outside of the capital have been non-custodial, prosecutors in Moscow keep seeking prison time, requesting four years in prison for an entrepreneur who donated 28,000 rubles ($360).

These prosecutions are part of a nationwide crackdown that Mediazona has been tracking. As of October 2025, at least 114 criminal cases have been launched in 49 Russian regions for donating to the ACF after it was outlawed as an “extremist organisation” in 2021. The rate of prosecutions has accelerated sharply, with more cases reaching the courts in the first nine months of 2025 than in the previous three years combined. The campaign has targeted not only activists but also ordinary people, using information from Russian banks to identify those who sent money to the foundation after the ban.

In late November, Russian Supreme Court Russia’s has also declared ACF a “terrorist organisation”, an even harsher status.