MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. There is no "witch hunt" being conducted against journalists who are accused of extortion in Russia, President Vladimir Putin said at his combined Direct Line Q&A session and year-end press conference.
The president said he was unaware of the details of the specific case, in response to a reporter’s question about his opinion on prosecutors demanding a 14-year prison term for Alexandra Bayazitova, a co-author of a Russian Telegram channel. "Nobody is hunting for her, I am sure," the Russian leader replied, saying that the woman in question was hardly "a major opposition leader" who might generate such controversy.
In late November, a Moscow court sentenced Bayazitova and her colleague Olga Arkharova to 5 and 4.5 years’ incarceration, respectively, in a penal colony in an extortion case involving Promsvyazbank executive Alexander Ushakov. A federal prosecutor had asked that Bayazitova, an administrator of the "Adskiye babki" ("Hellish moolah") Telegram channel, be sentenced to 14 years behind bars.
According to the investigators and judges, the Telegram channel admins extorted money from certain individuals for guarantees that negative coverage about them would not appear on the channel.
Bayazitova previously worked for the dailies Kommersant and Izvestia as an economic reporter and was a columnist on the website Life.ru. She has been a Telegram blogger since 2017.