Sergey Reznik

Sergey Reznik is an opposition journalist from Rostov-on-Don. The newspapers he worked for were gradually closed down, and in recent years he has been engaged in journalistic activities exclusively on his blog in Live Journal. In his opinion, the reason for the persecution was his support of former Rostov Region prosecutor Valery Kuznetsov in his fight against local officials. Reznik's phone was tapped and he received threatening calls. After complaints to the Investigative Committee, prosecutor's office and FSB about threats, a case was opened against Reznik under the article on false denunciation: he allegedly hired people to call him and threaten him, and now accuses them of threats. Reznik was also charged with commercial bribery - he allegedly tried to bribe an employee of a vehicle inspection station to pass the inspection without showing his car - as well as insulting a representative of authority - in his blog he called Olga Solovyeva, chairwoman of the Arbitration Court of the region, a mummy. Reznik, his supporters and lawyers revealed a number of falsifications in the case, but the court sentenced the journalist to a year and a half in a general regime penal colony. Already after Reznik was convicted, another case was brought against him - about false denunciation and at the same time insulting Rostov police operative Andrei Glinkin (Reznik suspected him of pedophilia), as well as insulting Dmitry Ishchenko, deputy head of the department for countering extremism of the Rostov region's Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Reznik called him a put-down) and Roman Klimov, former deputy prosecutor of the Rostov region (he called him a tractor driver and prosecutor swindler). On 22 January 2015, he was sentenced to three years in a colony. On 13 May, the court of second instance reduced the sentence by a month. On 25 October 2016, he was released.

On 15 October 2021 Reznik was taken from Reznik's signature on non-departure in the framework of the case of insulting the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland. On 25 October, he was indicted. Due to the fact that Reznik's whereabouts were not established, he was put on a wanted list.

In July 2022, it became known that a criminal case was opened against Reznik for spreading deliberately false information about the Russian Armed Forces.

In August 2022, it became known that a case was opened against Reznik for extorting money from Roman Gevorkyan, the director of the Nakhchivan market in Rostov-on-Don. In the same month, it was reported that three cases - on the rehabilitation of Nazism, on "fakes" and on extortion - were merged.

In December 2022, it became known that Reznik was prosecuted for calls for extremist activity because of a post with comments by anonymous lawyers about the shooting at a military recruitment centre in the Irkutsk region, published in the Rostov_com Telegram channel. Then in Ust-Ilimsk, 25-year-old Ruslan Zinin wounded a military commissar with a rifle, after which he was detained by Rosgvardia officers. The linguists who conducted the expert examination saw in the publication "justification of violent ideology" and "incitement to commit violence against military commissars". Reznik claims that the investigation has no evidence of his involvement in these comments. This case was merged with the previous one.

On 11 March 2026, Reznik was sentenced in absentia to ten years.