On 19 January 2026, Russian independent media that a court in Moscow had begun proceedings against Valeria Kichigina, a journalist for the independent Russian broadcaster Dozhd (TV Rain), on charges of disseminating 鈥渇ake information鈥� under Russia鈥檚 wartime 鈥渇ake news鈥� law.
According to the indictment read in court, one charge relates to a 6 April 2022 Telegram post in which Kichigina shared a link to reporting explaining why the Bucha massacre could not be dismissed as a hoax. A second charge stems from an 8 August 2023 Instagram post on the anniversary of the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia, in which she wrote about Russian forces invading and occupying part of Georgia, a statement that Russian investigators labelled as 鈥渇alse information.鈥� Both posts are no longer publicly accessible. The trial marks one of the first known prosecutions under this statute for a post which was not related to coverage of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In separate proceedings, Kichigina was added to Russia鈥檚 registry of 鈥渢errorists and extremists鈥� maintained by the financial monitoring agency in August 2025, and the criminal case related to this was formally transferred to Moscow’s Tagansky court in December 2025.