Former Kommersant journalist Vladimir Soloviov, who has lived in the Republic of Moldova since 2022 and hosts the program “Puterea a patra” on N4, received a three-year prison sentence in absentia from Moscow’s Savelovsky District Court. The court issued the ruling on May 14 after finding him guilty of “participating in the activities of a foreign or international organization declared undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation.”
According to the court, Soloviov collaborated with the Carnegie Foundation, which Russian authorities placed on the list of undesirable organizations. Soloviov regularly published articles about the Transnistrian region on the “Carnegie Politika” platform. Recently, the journalist said he began collaborating with the organization before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and continues to work with it.
In addition to the prison sentence, the court banned him from engaging in website administration activities for three years.
Russian authorities placed the journalist on the wanted list on March 26, 2026. Earlier, in April 2025, a district court in Russia fined him 10,000 rubles for participating in the activities of an undesirable organization. Soloviov said he challenged the sanction in court through his lawyers but lost the case and does not intend to pay the fine.
Vladimir Soloviov was born in the Odesa region and grew up in the Transnistrian region. In 2002, he graduated from Moldova State University with a degree in political science. In 2005, he joined the editorial team of Kommersant, where he specialized in international affairs. During his career, he covered protests and conflicts in Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan before leaving the Russian Federation in February 2022. He is currently developing his own media project about the post-Soviet space, titled “TEMA.”