The wording of the charge in such cases is rarely clear without context. The law on undesirable organizations, adopted in Russia in 2015, allows a foreign or international organization to be designated undesirable. After that, any participation in its activities, including the dissemination of its materials, becomes grounds for administrative or criminal prosecution. The status is assigned by the Prosecutor General's Office, and the decision usually does not depend on who exactly shared the material. Therefore, for the accused, it matters what exactly is considered "activity" in a particular case.
Interview or Repost
According to Paper, the "activity" in the case turned out to be an interview the priest gave to Novaya Gazeta Europe. The publication, created by journalists from the former editorial staff of Novaya Gazeta after its suspension and move abroad, became an undesirable organization only nine months after the publication of that conversation. Thus, by Paper's logic, the conversation was recorded and published before legal consequences arose against the publication.
Other sources—RBC, ZakS, and the court press service—describe the charge differently. According to their reports, it is not about an interview but about a repost of a link to the publication's YouTube channel and podcast. It is possible that both descriptions refer to the same material, but from the published reports it is impossible to understand which specific text or recording formed the basis of the protocol. The difference between an interview and a repost in Russian law is hard to overestimate: in the first case, the person is the author of the statements; in the second, they disseminate someone else's material, and the circumstances of guilt may differ.
Previous Cases
For Paper, this story is partly personal. In 2025, Mikhnov-Vaitenko was already fined 15,000 rubles specifically for reposting a recording by the publication itself, which had been designated a foreign agent. The priest received foreign agent status in July 2024, and in 2025 the regional court overturned the fine decision on his appeal. The publication also recalls the 30,000 ruble fine for "discrediting" the army, imposed earlier. These cases share a common pattern: materials that the Ministry of Justice or the prosecutor's office classify as prohibited or problematic are disseminated through the priest, and each new action becomes grounds for a new protocol.
Foreign agent status in Russia means the obligation to label publications, maintain reporting, and submit information about income. For a person not engaged in media work, such requirements become part of everyday life, and violation of deadlines or reporting forms leads to new fines. Therefore, each court decision on a repost concerns not only one fine but also how many times a person will have to explain themselves to the state.
Helping Refugees
According to Paper, Mikhnov-Vaitenko's range of activities is not limited to public statements. The publication writes:
From the first days of the invasion, Paper writes, Mikhnov-Vaitenko helped Ukrainian refugees in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, and this work did not stop throughout all the years the trials were ongoing.
This part of the story is not connected to the wording of the charge, but without it, it is difficult to understand why the cases against the priest attract such interest from the human rights community. Assistance to refugees was carried out in parallel with the legal proceedings, and according to the publication, no court decision stopped it.
The very fact of the Paper correspondent's presence at the hearing preserves for this case the transparency that many similar processes lack. The hearing at which the fine was imposed became an occasion for the publication to tell about the priest not only as an accused but also as a person who had already gone through several similar decisions and returned to the same work.
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