On 23 November 2023, a court in the Russian city of Tolyatti fined Leonid Spirin, the editor-in-chief of independent online news outlet Groza, on charges of “discrediting” the Russian army.
Spirin was fined 30 thousand rubles for a post by Groza on its page in VKontakte (Russian social media network similar to Facebook), in which the war in Ukraine was called a “war” and “occupation”, while the policies of the Russian state were characterized as “militarism”, according to the publicly available court ruling.
Groza, which is an online outlet mainly publishing for Russia’s student community, was blocked in September 2023 for its reporting on the war in Ukraine (see separate alert).