The Simonovsky Court of Moscow fined the founder of The New Times magazine Novye Vremya LLC and editor-in-chief Yevgenia Albats 670,000 rubles for publications about the war in Ukraine. This was announced by the head of the human rights group "Agora" Pavel Chikov with reference to the lawyer Leonid Solovyov in the Telegram channel.
Albats and the publication were found guilty of spreading “fake news” about the army (part 9 of article 13.15 of the Code of Administrative Offenses). The founder was fined twice at 300,000 rubles each, and the editor-in-chief – 70,000 (with the upper limit of 200,000 rubles).
According to the publication itself, on March 30, Yevgenia Albats was already brought to administrative responsibility under the same article, the fine amounted to 120 thousand rubles. All cases are related to publications about “battles in Ukraine”. At the same time, the notes came out before the adoption of a package of laws on "fake news". Roskomnadzor drew up a protocol at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, Albats pleaded not guilty.
After the outbreak of the war, Roskomnadzor demanded that the Russian media, when covering the invasion of Ukraine, use only the wording "special operation". After the introduction of the law on “fakes” about the Russian army, The Insider, Radio Liberty, Current Time, Crimea.Realii, Voice of America, New Times, Taiga.info, DOXA, Ekho Moskvy were blocked ”, “Rain”, “Medusa”, BBC Russian Service, Deutsche Welle and others. TV channel "Rain", radio "Echo of Moscow" and the Tomsk agency TV2 decided to stop working. In most cases, the blocking was initiated by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office. The human rights project Roskomsvoboda reported that the number of publications blocked in Russia after the start of the war exceeded 5,000.