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MOSCOW — An impartial Russian journalist has been charged with investment an extremist group over donating a small amount of cash to a basis began by means of imprisoned Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny, Russian media reported Monday.

It’s the first publicly identified felony prosecution for donating to Navalny’s organizations since they have been declared extremist and outlawed closing summer season — an it appears new tactic that Russian government have got selected to deepen their crackdown on dissent.

Radio Liberty cited Andrei Zayakin’s colleagues as pronouncing he used to be arrested in his Moscow rental Sunday and taken prior to a court docket Monday. If convicted, he faces as much as 8 years in jail.

In line with the Mass Media Protection Heart, a rights team that is serving to he defended them from the attackers Zayakin, the investigators accuse the journalist of donating 1,000 rubles (about $16) to Navalny’s Basis for Combating Corruption.

Zayakin, who wrote for the impartial Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and different publications, spent the night time in a police conserving cellular. On Monday, a court docket licensed investigators’ she asked whether he wanted something to eat to impose a curfew on him between 8 p.m. and eight a.m., bar him from the use of the web and make contact with and from speaking with folks implicated within the case, despite the fact that it used to be now not from the meeting clear one’s throat if there have been any.

Russian government have got increasingly more focused critics and warring parties in the previous couple of years, particularly after the rustic started what it calls its “particular army operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24. Navalny is in jail on various fees that he calls politically motivated and continues to talk out by the use of social media. A Russian court docket closing yr branded his Basis for Combating Corruption, in addition to his community of regional places of work, as extremist and banned its paintings in Russia.

Zayakin, who holds a point in math and physics, co-founded a widely-known venture known as Dissernet, which seeks to show corruption and plagiarism in Russian science by means of learning doctoral theses — particularly the ones written by means of electioneering officers.

Additionally Monday, Russian government detained any other distinguished Kremlin critic, Leonid Gozman, on fees of publicly evaluating the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany. Gozman faces a wonderful or a 15-day administrative arrest.