Russian police raid family home of exiled IStories editor-in-chief deemed ‘foreign agent’

Police have raided the family home of Alesya Marokhovskaya, the editor-in-chief of Russian independent news outlet IStories, in connection with a pending criminal case against her for failing to comply with “foreign agent” regulations, IStories reported on Thursday.

Alesya Marokhovskaya, who was declared a “foreign agent” in August 2021 and now lives outside Russia, is accused of failing to submit a report on her activities and income to the Russian Justice Ministry, the outlet wrote.

Law enforcement officers raided the apartment of Marokhovskaya’s parents in Magadan, a city in the Russian Far East, confiscating their phones and all electronic equipment and refusing to wait for a lawyer to arrive. One investigator also attempted to convince Marokhovskaya’s parents that their daughter needed to return to Russia, IStories said.

Marokhovskaya was notified of the charges against her via the Telegram messaging app by an investigator who tried to convince her to come back to Russia claiming that she could “get off with a fine” if she returned, IStories added.

The investigators also interrogated Marokhovskaya’s mother, who was born in Ukraine, asking her if she had any Ukrainian relatives.

IStories was founded in 2020 by prominent Russian investigative reporters, but was forced to end its operations in Russia a year later after the outlet and several of its journalists, including Marokhovskaya, were declared “foreign agents”.

Shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022, the outlet was declared an “undesirable” organisation, effectively making it a criminal offence for anybody in Russia to collaborate with IStories.

Marokhovskaya, a former investigative journalist at Novaya Gazeta who took over from Roman Anin as the outlet’s editor-in-chief in September, would face up to six years in prison for “organising the activities of an undesirable organisation” if she returned to Russia.