Russian investigators have dropped a criminal case against Lida Moniava, a prominent advocate for seriously ill children and head of the Dom s Mayakom (lit. “House with a Lighthouse”) charity foundation, her lawyer Mikhail Biryukov told the Interfax news agency earlier today. Moniava had been accused of spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces — a charge that carries a sentence of five to 10 years in prison.
“According to the investigator, the criminal case has been closed,” Biryukov said, explaining that the case was dropped because investigators found no elements of a crime in Moniava’s actions.
Moniava had been charged under Russia’s wartime censorship law criminalizing the “public dissemination of knowingly false information about the use of the Russian armed forces,” a provision introduced after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and which is widely used against individuals who engage in antiwar speech or who share journalistic reporting that contradicts the Kremlin’s official version of events.
The law has been used to imprison scores of Russians for their antiwar statements, including opposition politician Ilya Yashin, artist Sasha Skochilenko, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and former Moscow municipal deputy Alexei Gorinov. (Yashin, Skochilenko, and Kurmasheva were released as part of a prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West in August 2024, while Gorinov remains in prison.)
Moniava was detained on Sept. 2 after law enforcement officials searched her home. Investigators alleged that she had posted in her public Telegram channel what they described as “knowingly false information” about Russian military actions against Ukrainian civilians. In February, Moniava had already been fined 45,000 rubles ($530) for “discrediting” the Russian military in three Telegram posts.
In 2020, the “Dom s Mayakom” children’s hospice was inspected by the Interior Ministry’s drug control division. The institution was found to have violated rules governing the handling of narcotic drugs under Article 6.16 of Russia’s Administrative Code and was fined 200,000 rubles (around $2,800 at the time). The Moscow City Court later overturned the penalty, ruling that the violation was minor.
Moniava has worked in the nonprofit sector since 2008. She co-founded the “Dom s Mayakom” hospice with prominent Russian palliative care advocate Nyuta Federmesser, becoming head of the foundation in 2018.
