Russia’s financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring on Thursday added exiled author and anti-war intellectual Dmitry Bykov to its list of “terrorists and extremists.”
The designation allows the authorities to freeze bank accounts and block access to financial services without a court ruling. Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “terrorists and extremists” includes more than 17,800 individuals and over 800 organizations.
Russian investigators announced in April that they charged Bykov, who now lives in the U.S., with spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine and evading “foreign agent” obligations.
The Justice Ministry labeled him a “foreign agent” in July 2022.
Law enforcement authorities placed Bykov on a federal wanted list in July. Last month, a Moscow court placed him in pre-trial detention in absentia on both charges.
In December 2023, one of Russia’s leading publishing houses suspended the printing and sale of Bykov’s books over his anti-war views.
Bykov, a critic of President Vladimir Putin and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has taught at Cornell University since 2022 and is now a modern language and cultures professor at the University of Rochester.
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