Svetlana Anokhina was sentenced in absentia to five years.

A court in Makhachkala found journalist and human rights activist Svetlana Anokhina, who lives abroad, guilty of spreading fake news about the army and sentenced her in absentia to five years in prison.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," journalist and human rights activist Svetlana Anokhina, accused of spreading "fakes" about the army, has been arrested in absentia in Dagestan. A 37-year-old native of the republic is also facing a similar case. Svetlana Anokhina, who left Dagestan due to threats, learned about the criminal case for public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces from the media in April 2023. In September 2024, Anokhina reported that security forces visited her 95-year-old mother to take a saliva sample. Anokhina called these actions intimidation of the elderly woman. "What does my mother and her saliva have to do with this? What are you going to compare it to? With my traces on the internet?" she demanded.

Human rights activist Svetlana Anokhina was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison under the article on "fakes" about the Russian Armed Forces.

The Sovetsky District Court of Makhachkala sentenced human rights activist and founder of the Marem crisis center Svetlana Amirova (Anokhina) in absentia to five years in prison under the article on "fakes" about the Russian Armed Forces (Part 1 of Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code). The criminal prosecution stemmed from two social media posts by Anokhina on March 1 and April 4, 2022, about events in Ukraine, specifically Bucha, the APUS project reported today.

According to the case file on the website of the Sovietsky District Court of Makhachkala, Anokhina's case was heard beginning on September 10, 2025, with the final hearing scheduled for today. The court's website does not report the ruling. One of the parties involved in the case is the Levashinsky Department of Court Bailiffs.

Svetlana Anokhina is a journalist and human rights activist. For the past several years, she has been writing for the publication "Daptar," which actively reports on women's rights and crimes against them in the Caucasus. The founder of the Marem crisis center, which provides assistance to women in difficult situations. In August 2022, Anokhina told the Caucasian Knot that since 2020, she and the human rights organization Marem have been able to evacuate more than 50 women fleeing domestic violence from Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya. "Initially, we looked for different options. If there was a possibility of returning, we spoke with relatives. If the family was religious, we tried to influence them through a mullah or religious authority, depending on whether they were adherents of Sufi Islam or Salafis. Well, evacuation was a last resort. Now only evacuation remains," she noted.

On June 10, 2021, Dagestani security forces and their colleagues from Chechnya appeared in Makhachkala at a shelter - an apartment for victims of domestic violence - to take away Chechen resident Khalimat Taramov, who fled the republic. Human rights activist and journalist Svetlana Anokhina, as well as Iraida Smirnova and Maisarat Kilyaskhanova, who were in the shelter, were injured. They were charged with resisting police, but all those detained were acquitted by a Makhachkala court. In June 2024, the Sovietsky District Court of Makhachkala found that the rights of Svetlana Anokhina, Iraida Smirnova, and Maisarat Kilyaskhanova had been violated, ordering the Ministry of Internal Affairs to pay three thousand rubles each to them. The victims filed suit seeking moral damages in the amounts of 445,000, 519,000, and 630,000 rubles. In November 2024, the appellate court increased the compensation amount from three to 15,000 rubles. The lawyers argued in their cassation appeal that 15,000 rubles for each victim was inappropriate for the scale of the damage and violated the principle of fairness. The cassation court overturned these decisions and returned the claim for a new trial.

In 2016, Svetlana Anokhina won an award for journalists writing about the Caucasus for her article "Circumcised Women Cut Their Daughters." The competition is held in memory of Dagestani journalist Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev. Caucasian Knot journalist Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev was shot dead on July 9, 2013, in the village of Semender in Dagestan.