Russia adds The Insider’s investigative journalist Sergei Ezhov to its list of “terrorists and extremists”

Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) has added The Insider’s investigative journalist Sergei Ezhov to its “list of terrorists and extremists,” according to the agency’s public database. The update was widely reported by Kremlin-adjacent media outlets, including Vedomosti, Kommersant, and Komsomolskaya Pravda, among multiple others.

Earlier in November, Ezhov was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison for his “failure to fulfill the obligations of a foreign agent,” “participation in the activities of an extremist organization,” and “financing of extremist activities.”

Ezhov, whose investigations have exposed the inexplicable wealth of multiple prominent Russian state officials, also works with the late Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF). The ACF, along with Navalny’s network of regional headquarters, were declared “extremist organizations” in June of 2021, leading to their liquidation in Russia in September of that year.

The Russian state is currently moving to recognize the ACF’s U.S.-registered entity, ACF Inc., as a “terrorist organization.”

Russia’s Justice Ministry added Ezhov to the registry of “foreign agents” in July 2024.

Responding to today’s “terrorist and extremist” designation, Ezhov wrote on his Telegram channel:

“It’s almost funny. The censored media are suddenly breaking rank to report that I’ve been added to the list of extremists. If only they quoted our investigations this eagerly, instead of quoting Rosfinmonitoring.

All I can do is repeat what I said the other day on Instagram:

Laughter, as we know, is a defense mechanism. Maybe that’s why I laugh every time a new criminal or administrative case is opened against me.

But laughter doesn’t just help calm the anxiety, it also makes us partly accept a situation that is anything but normal. We joke with each other, comparing our 'foreign agent' labels, wanted notices, and sentences in absentia — almost forgetting that all of this should still make us angry.

It seems we’ve even fallen into a trap ourselves. By laughing at the absurd cruelty, you partly legitimize it. But taking every new act of repression seriously uses up too much energy — otherwise, that’s all you’d ever do. If you condemn each case with a straight face and explain logically how it harms society, you’ll come across as dull and pedantic.

At some point, the culture of irony played a cruel joke on [Russian] media and political discourse. We were afraid to sound either too obvious or, conversely, not deep enough. We were afraid to seem sincere or naive. So we kept mocking things instead, avoiding the important topics, leaving meaning and agenda-setting to the very people we mocked.

The good news is, I’ve found my own way out of that trap. Maybe it’ll work for someone else too. The recipe is this: don’t defend, attack. Respond with investigations. Like in our recent case, where we exposed the police general behind the persecution of street musicians in St. Petersburg.”

You can read all of Sergei Ezhov’s investigations for The Insider here.

In late September of this year, Timur Olevsky, the editor-in-chief of The Insider’s newsroom, was declared wanted in Russia on charges of “participation in the activities of an undesirable organization.” The Insider and its investigative partner Bellingcat were declared “undesirable organizations” in Russia in July 2022, shortly after being recognized as “foreign agents.” At the time, the Prosecutor General’s Office claimed the work of both outlets “poses a threat to the constitutional order and security” of the Russian Federation.

Other media outlets that have received the designation include Novaya Gazeta Europe, The Moscow Times, and TV Rain.

Other journalists at The Insider who are currently being persecuted for their work include investigative reporter Andrey Zayakin, Anastasia Mikhaylova, and Andrey Zakharov, as well as editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov, who was the subject of a foiled kidnapping and murder plot orchestrated by the FSB.