A criminal case was opened against Ilya Varlamov for violating the law on “foreign agents”

A criminal case was opened against blogger Ilya Varlamov for evading the duties of a “foreign agent” (Part 2 of Article 330.1 of the Criminal Code). The Moscow prosecutor's office reports this.

The department demanded that this case be opened at the end of September. Then the prosecutor’s office emphasized that Varlamov was fined twice during the year for publications without the “foreign agent” label.

In June and August, Moscow courts imposed fines of 30 thousand rubles on a blogger due to posts in a telegram channel. In addition, in the summer he was fined 50 thousand rubles under a protocol on “discrediting” the army, which was drawn up because of a video on his YouTube channel dated April 22, 2022. According to Center “E”, the text in this video “expressed a clear negative attitude towards the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

The Ministry of Justice included Varlamov in the register of “foreign agents” in March 2023. The department explained this decision by saying that the blogger distributed materials from other “foreign agents,” criticized the Russian authorities and opposed the war in Ukraine.