Putin imprisons Russian journalist for 12 years | Political News

A choose in Moscow has handed journalist Daria Shipacheva a 12-year prison sentence after convicting her of treason, outlet Mediazona reported Wednesday.

The exact allegations stay murky, because the proceedings had been closed to the public. Still, people acquainted with Shipacheva’s case say the Ukrainian-born journalist’s conviction stemmed from a bank switch she allegedly despatched to a relative in Ukraine, which the Moscow City Court handled as the premise for the guilty verdict.

“As far as we know, investigators took a transfer she made to a civilian family member, reinterpreted its purpose and built the entire treason charge around it,” an unidentified acquaintance of the journalist told T-Invariant. Shipacheva was arrested in April 2025 and moved to a detention facility in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia.

T-Invariant said she was later relocated to Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison. Mediazona reported the trial lasted only 90 minutes and, like earlier proceedings, was held behind closed doorways.

“She texted that night that someone was banging on her door,” a source told Mediazona about the evening Shipacheva was arrested. Neighbors later told her mates that “a crowd of riot police had burst into Shipacheva’s apartment,” after which she stopped speaking.

Mediazona quoted the buddy as saying that after the costs had been filed, she struck a plea deal with investigators. In letters from detention, Shipacheva didn’t present particulars about the case.

Under Article 275 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which covers treason, 12 years is the minimal potential sentence. The court also imposed a 300,000-ruble wonderful (a little more than $3,500) and ordered the seizure of 1.558 million rubles (about $19,500).

Shipacheva labored as a science and health journalist. From 2019 to 2025, she freelanced as a medical reporter for Forbes Russia and contributed to retailers including RBC, Takie Dela, and others. Before her arrest, T-Invariant reported that she was focused with online abuse by supporters of the outlawed ultranationalist group Male State because of her feminist views.

In the first six months of 2026, Russian courts convicted a report 312 people of treason, espionage, or illegal cooperation with a overseas nation, according to the exiled news outlet Vyorstka.

Since 2022, treason and espionage instances have expanded sharply, with a whole lot of Russian and Ukrainian residents detained on comparable accusations each 12 months. One instance is former protection reporter Ivan Safronov, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2022 after being arrested in July 2020 for allegedly “passing classified information” about the Russian army to Czech intelligence.

In 2024, twin Russian-U.S. citizen Ksenia Karelina was sentenced to 12 years after authorities accused her of treason tied to a $51 donation to the Ukraine-supporting charity Razom for Ukraine. Prosecutors alleged the funds had been later used for Ukraine’s army wants. Karelina was later freed as half of a U.S.-Russia prisoner swap.

Russian scientists have also repeatedly confronted treason prosecutions, often involving claims they shared delicate research or labored improperly with overseas colleagues. The so-called “hypersonics case” has turn out to be the most important fashionable Russian prosecution of scientists, with eight defendants all over 60. In May, a court in Novosibirsk sentenced physicists Valery Zvegintsev and Vladislav Galkin — both concerned in hypersonics research — to 12-and-a-half years each on treason expenses.