Exiled Academic Dmitry Zayakin Sentenced to Five Years for Donating to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation

A court in Moscow sentenced exiled Russian academic and plagiarism activist Dmitry Zayakin to five years in prison in absentia on extremism charges on Wednesday.

Zayakin was detained in August 2022 for allegedly “financing extremist activities” after he donated 1,000 rubles (approximately $13) to the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

He reportedly left Russia in October 2022, coinciding with the time he was placed on the Interior Ministry’s wanted list. On October 29 of that year, Navalny associate Georgy Alburov shared a photo of Zayakin arriving in Vilnius, Lithuania.

In 2021, Russian authorities designated the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Navalny’s broader political network as “extremist.”

According to the independent news outlet Mediazona, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court in Moscow declared Zayakin guilty of financing extremism and handed down the sentence in his absence.

Last month, Zayakin denied the accusations through his lawyer.

He is a journalist and one of the founders of Dissernet, an online initiative that investigates plagiarism in Russian academic institutions and publications. Volunteers from Dissernet have discovered instances of plagiarism in the dissertations of various high-ranking officials in the Russian government.

Authorities have previously classified Zayakin as a “foreign agent” and listed him among the country’s “terrorists and extremists.”