On 10 November 2023, a district court in Ulan-Ude, the capital of Russia’s Buryatiya region, sentenced journalist and activist Alexandra Garmazhapova, the founder of the Free Buryatiya Foundation, which advocates for the region’s autonomy, to seven years of prison in absentia. Garmazhapova was sentenced for giving an interview to a Ukrainian media outlet in July 2022, in which she alleged that a group of 17 Russian soldiers in Luhansk (in an occupied region of Eastern Ukraine) had been locked up by their commanders for refusing to fight. The journalist and activist was found guilty of disseminating “false information” about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On 10 February 2023, Alexandra Garmazhapova was put on the Russian Ministry of Interior’s ‘wanted’ list. The motives of the decision were not explained. Garmazhapova told independent Russian media outlet MediaZona that she believed a criminal case had been opened against her for so-called “fake news” about the Russian armed forces, according to Russian laws which ban war-related publications not based on official Russian sources. The journalist currently resides outside of Russia and does not face imminent arrest.
In November 2022, Garmazhapova was designated as a “foreign agent” in Russia.
Free Buryatiya works as a foundation supporting mobilized Russians from the Buryatiya region in returning home from the zone of armed conflict. The foundation is critical of the war and calls for the so-called “decolonization” of Russia by greater autonomy of regions and respect of regional ethnic groups.