Until March 19, 2018, the Central District Court of Sochi arrested Alexander Valov, a blogger and editor-in-chief of the BlogSochi website, accused of extortion. This was reported on Twitter by lawyer Alexander Popkov.

"Caucasian Knot" writes that at the meeting, Valov demanded the removal of Judge Taygibov, as he wrote critical material about him and doubted his impartiality. The judge stated that he had not read the material.

Valov was detained on January 19 after a search of his apartment. The investigation believes that he extorted money from the State Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party Yuri Napso. Napso filed this application on 19 January.
The blogger was broadcasting live from the phone, when the special forces broke into the premises, they knocked the phone out of the hands of the blogger and deleted the video, but it was preserved on the Internet. The blogger's apartment was de-energized. In the video, you can hear the blogger saying: “The chainsaw has turned on, apparently now they will break the door ... hello, 37 years old.”
Valov connected the search with the fact that the presidential election is coming soon, and the fact that BlogSochi is “the only independent project in the city” that talked about the problems around the Olympics.

A blogger from Sochi was arrested for two months