Lithuanian authorities denied Russian journalist Yevgeny Titov political asylum

The Migration Department of the Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs refused to grant political asylum to journalist Yevgeny Titov, who left Russia in the summer of 2016. This was reported on July 4 by Radio Liberty with reference to the journalist himself. The District Court of Vilnius recognized the decision as legal. Titov appealed the decision to the country's Supreme Court. If the court of appeal upholds the decision, the journalist will have to be deported to Russia.

Evgeny Titov worked as a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta in the Kuban, collaborated with Radio Liberty, and was the creator and presenter of the NoGa TV channel. He dealt with topics related to political persecution (in particular, the case of the Kuban public figure and teacher Mikhail Savva), conducted journalistic investigations.

In October 2015, they tried to attack Titov . This happened the next day after he, together with the film crew of the Swedish TV channel STV, visited the construction site of the Kerch bridge in the Crimea. All the time while the journalists were at the construction site, they were followed by unknown persons. Then, when Titov was about to go again to the Temryuk district of the Krasnodar Territory to continue the investigation, unknown persons began to send messages to journalists that he had been killed in Temryuk. In particular, Arkady Babchenko received such a message. According to OVD-Info, "Rostov trolls" — people allegedly associated with the Rostov Center for Combating Extremism — were involved in sending out such messages.

Titov told Radio Liberty that he was “threatened” in Russia in connection with his journalistic activities and, above all, with the investigation into the construction of the Kerch bridge. According to him, several attempts were made to open a criminal case against him when he covered the events related to the elections.

The journalist explained that when making the decision, the Migration Department of the Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs presented two arguments against granting him asylum. “The first argument is that in the Krasnodar Territory, where I lived, according to the Lithuanian Migration Department, environmental activists are persecuted, and journalists are not included in this group. The second argument is that I received serious threats in the fall of 2015, and arrived only in the summer of 2016.”