A former loyalist blogger turned fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been detained and accused of spreading false information about the armed forces, state media reported Friday.
The news came just as a court hearing was being held for another Kremlin critic and opposition politician, Boris Nadezhdin, in a sign of an intensified response to mounting internal dissent over the war in Ukraine and its impact on Russian life.
The blogger, Ilya Remeslo, stunned many in Russia when he published a scathing manifesto against the Russian leader that went viral in March.
He was detained in St. Petersburg early Friday and could face up to 10 years in prison, state news agency Tass reported, citing law enforcement sources.
The charge he faces is a common one for opponents of the war in Ukraine and has been used to jail numerous dissidents since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022.
Remeslo will be brought to Moscow for a hearing to determine a pretrial restriction, his lawyer, Sergey Badashmin, told Tass. It was not clear if Remeslo is disputing the charge.
After years of pro-Kremlin activism, Remeslo published a long post on Telegram, titled “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.”
Remeslo, who was previously known as a vocal critic of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny and even testified against him in court, accused Putin of being “a war criminal and thief” among a litany of criticisms.
The day after his essay, Remeslo, 42, ended up in a psychiatric hospital in unclear circumstances.
He emerged from his hospitalization after several weeks and continued criticizing the Russian leader on his social media with the same zeal. He gave an extended interview following the episode, saying hospitalization was “the price” of his words about Putin.
Just as news of Remeslo’s detention spread Friday, a court hearing was held in the Moscow region for opposition politician and ex-presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin.
He was barred from challenging Putin in 2024 and was declared a foreign agent last week, a designation that the Kremlin often uses to discredit its opponents.
Nadezhdin, 63, was accused of displaying “extremist symbols” stemming from a 2023 post on his Telegram channel, with a link to a YouTube stream where a photo of Navalny was displayed.
Russian authorities have designated Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation as extremist and banned. Nadezhdin denies the charge.
In what proved a more lenient ruling than some feared, the court fined Nadezhdin 1,000 rubles ($12) and set him free.
The foreign agent designation prevents Nadezhdin from running in parliamentary elections this September, which are being closely watched for signs of public discontent.
In his speech in court Friday, Nadezhdin said the purpose of his trial was to “shut me up and not let me run in parliamentary elections.”
When Nadezhdin tried to run against Putin in 2024, long lines of supporters waited to back his candidacy with their signatures. This riled up the Kremlin, which works to create a perception of total support for Putin among the voting public.
Before his trial, Nadezhdin said he did not rule out leaving the country for the sake of his family, something that many opponents of the Kremlin have been forced to do. But he then announced that he received an official notification that he is prohibited from leaving Russia, something that he was planning to appeal.
