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Russian interior ministry puts author Boris Akunin on wanted list

After a recording of the conversation was made public, a retail chain of bookstores stopped selling Akunin's books over his anti-Russian statements

MOSCOW, January 26. /TASS/. Author Grigory Chkhartishvili, commonly known under his penname Boris Akunin, who has been recognized as a foreign agent in Russia and put on the register of terrorists and extremists, has been put on the Russian interior ministry’s list of persons wanted for committing crimes.

"Chkhartishvili Grigory Shalvovich, born in 1956, is wanted under an article of the Russian Criminal Court," according to the ministry’s database. The exact Criminal Code article is not specified.

A criminal case was opened against Akunin on charges of publicly justifying terrorism and disseminating false information about the actions of the Russian army (articles 205.2 and 207.3 on the Russian Criminal Code).

Earlier, the author talked with Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), saying that Kiev could not win the Ukraine conflict on the battlefield, but that its drone attacks on Russian cities were justified.

After a recording of the conversation was made public, a retail chain of bookstores stopped selling Akunin's books over his anti-Russian statements.

The writer has been living in London since 2014. On December 18, 2023, Russia’s financial monitoring watchdog put Akunin on the list of terrorists and extremists. On January12, the Russian ministry of justice added him to the list of foreign agents.

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