Russian internet and communications regulator Roskomnadzor drew up administrative protocols against the media outlet Lenizdat over what it alleged was the spread of false information about the invasion of Ukraine. The retroactive allegations stem from an article was published by Lenizdat on February 24 and removed at the request of Roskomnadzor on February 26 which used the word “war”. It involved reporting on what Russian authorities called the “special military operation” in Ukraine. Roskomnadzor drew up protocols under Part 9 of Art. 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation. They targeted Lenizdat editor-in-chief Ekaterina Sergeycheva and the legal entity MEDIA.S-Pb LLC. They faced fines of up to 200,000 or 500,000 rubes. Roskomnadzor said the protocol involved the “dissemination of deliberately unreliable publicly significant information under the guise of reliable messages, which created a threat of harm to life …” The article in question was entitled: “There are no excuses for war”. It was publish on February 24, the day of the full scale invasion. It cited the responses to the war by figures such as Leonid Parfenov, Ivan Urgant and Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta. Roskomnadzor claimed the quotations contained “inaccurate information about the unleashing of full-scale military operations by the Russian Federation.”
UPDATE: On 10 September 2022, a court in St. Petersburg fined Lenizdat 260,000 rubles for allegedly publishing fake news.