This isn’t the first sentence against an IStories journalist — and likely not the last.

But we’re still here, still reporting — thanks to readers like you. Please help us keep going! → istories.media/en/donations...

🔹 On December 5, 2024, security officers searched her parents’ home. The investigator also tried to persuade her parents that Alesya should return.

In January 2025, authorities placed Marokhovskaya on a wanted list.

🔹 In December 2024, a criminal case was opened. An investigator notified her via Telegram, urged her to return to Russia (promising the case would “likely end with a fine”), and threatened to put her on a wanted list if she refused.

Context:

🔹 In August 2021, after our investigation into Katerina Tikhonova (Putin’s daughter) and her first husband, Alesya and five other IStories journalists were added to Russia’s “foreign agents” register.
istories.media/en/investiga...

The actual figures are higher, as we were only able to examine the publicly available data.

Read the stories of teenagers, pensioners, mothers, and entire families sentenced on fabricated charges on our website 🔽

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6️⃣ At least 654 Ukrainian civilians have been prosecuted in the occupied territories or in Russia since the beginning of the full-scale war.

5️⃣ At least five of the kidnapped have died in captivity.

4️⃣ Kidnapped Ukrainian civilians are almost never exchanged: only one in 24 those exchanged is a civilian (the rest are military POWs).

3️⃣ In the occupied territories, 28% of the sentenced on these charges are women. The average proportion in Russia would be 6%. At least 8 cases of sentenced teenagers are known.

2️⃣ The average sentence is 13.5 years in prison. There are at least two known cases of life imprisonment.

1️⃣ Sentences for “treason”, “espionage” and “confidential cooperation” are being imposed more and more often: from July to September 2025, they were issued once in every three days, meanwhile before the war Russian courts would issue no more than 16 such sentences per year.

Since Russia annexed the so-called DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts, courts established by the occupying authorities have issued >190 sentences for “treason,” “espionage,” and “confidential cooperation with foreigners”.

After examining the documents, we've learned that:

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For the full AMA thread, go here
www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comme...

While working on the story, we found a mobilized martial-arts instructor’s public diary — an illuminating record of one person’s shift from pacifism to support for the war.

istories.media/en/stories/2...

One in four mobilized soldiers died in the war during the first year

The AMA was about our recent investigation of the outcomes of 3 years of Russian mobilization.

Here is the story itself:
istories.media/en/stories/2...

And here is the Charon Project Polina mentioned
istories.media/charon/?utm_...