Russia Frees Detained Reporter in Rare U-Turn After Protests

(Bloomberg) -- Russia ordered the release of an investigative journalist whose arrest on drug charges triggered a wave of protests about pressure on the media, in a rare Kremlin reversal in the face of mounting public opposition.

“The decision has been made to end the criminal prosecution of Ivan Golunov because of the lack of evidence of his involvement in a crime,” Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said Tuesday in an unusual televised statement. “He will be released from house arrest today, the charges are dropped.”

Police officers directly involved in the June 6 arrest of the freelance journalist have been suspended, Kolokoltsev said, adding that he’s asked President Vladimir Putin to dismiss several senior officers in Moscow responsible for the investigation.

The swift turnabout followed growing anger over Golunov’s detention in recent days, amid complaints he was being framed as retaliation for reports exposing official corruption. As discontent spread through the elite, the Kremlin seemed to soften its line. His case drew support from usually loyal cultural figures and some pro-government politicians, as well as sympathetic coverage in state media. Golunov denied the charges, which carried a sentence of up to 20 years, and accused police officers of planting narcotics on him.

“The Kremlin slipped on a banana peel here, but reacted quickly under pressure,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin aide who’s often critical of the authorities. “This was a failure in the system, but it would be mistaken to think it’s getting wobbly.”

The Kremlin welcomed the decision to drop the charges, spokesman Dmitry Peskov wrote in a text message. But he warned, “We oppose making any generalizations based on this specific case.”

The decision to abandon the prosecution -- exceedingly rare in a country where the courts acquit in less than 1% of cases - comes ahead of Putin’s annual “direct line” call-in with Russians next week, where he risked being confronted with questions about the scandal. It was announced on the eve of the annual Russia Day holiday on Wednesday, when Golunov’s supporters were planning a demonstration in Moscow.

It’s the second time in a month that public pressure has forced the authorities to back down. In Yekaterinburg, officials abandoned plans in May to build a church in a popular park after four nights of mass protests that prompted Putin to intervene and call for a rethink.

The Kremlin may benefit from the perception that it acted swiftly to curb abuses by lower-ranking officials, said Alexei Mukhin, head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Information. Since Golunov hadn’t been investigating corruption right at the top, “it wasn’t such a difficult decision to take,” he said.

At the same time, Kremlin critics remain under pressure. Leonid Volkov, an associate of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, received an additional 15-day sentence on Monday for organizing an unauthorized rally last year, after just having served a 20-day prison term for the same offense.

Putin, 66, the longest-ruling Russian leader since dictator Josef Stalin, has already faced a series of protests and plummeting ratings since last year amid dissatisfaction at stagnant living standards. He’s struggling for a way to hang onto power after the end of his current term in 2024, when he’s due to step down under the constitution, according to people close to the Kremlin.

“For the opposition, this is a signal that it’s possible to influence political decisions,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Elite Studies Center at the State University of Management. “So Putin will have to make his way between Scylla and Charybdis,” keeping the support of both law-enforcement and the public.

Supporters of Golunov, a freelance reporter for the Latvia-based Meduza news outlet, picketed the police headquarters in Moscow after his arrest.

Golunov said he’d been targeted because of his investigative reports alleging official corruption in the funeral business in Moscow. He had been receiving threats for the past 13 months, according to Meduza’s editor-in-chief, Ivan Kolpakov, who linked the drugs charges to the journalist’s work.

Before his release, a top Putin ally, the speaker of the senate, Valentina Matviyenko, called the charges against Golunov the result of “unprofessionalism, recklessness or a provocation,” according to state news service RIA Novosti. Violations in the handling of the case “cause distrust” of investigative authorities, she added.

“Ivan’s freedom is a great reason to celebrate,” Kolpakov and other prominent journalists said on Meduza’s website. While those who organized the operation against him haven’t been named, journalists will continue their work, they said.

“This is just the beginning, there is a lot of work ahead so that what happened never happens to anyone else,” they said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net;Stepan Kravchenko in Moscow at skravchenko@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin

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