The Insider's investigative journalist Sergei Ezhov. Screenshot: The Insider (YouTube)
The Russian Interior Ministry has placed The Insider’s investigative journalist Sergei Ezhov on its wanted list, the independent exiled outlet Mediazona reported earlier today after discovering the information in the ministry’s official database.
The Interior Ministry’s website entry does not disclose which article of the Criminal Code the case is based on. On March 17, the journalist became the subject of a criminal investigation in Russia over his alleged “failure to comply with obligations as a foreign agent,” with law enforcement searching his parents’ apartment in the city of Ryazan as part of the case.
The Ozero cooperative, founded in 1996 near St. Petersburg, was a community of summer homes (dachas) that united Vladimir Putin and several close associates — including Sergei and Andrei Fursenko, Rossiya Bank majority shareholder Yury Kovalchuk, and former President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin — into a formal network. Many of its members later rose to powerful positions in business and government, forming the core of Putin’s inner circle.
The Insider was declared an “undesirable” organization in Russia in July 2022. Prior to the designation, it was also recognized as a “foreign agent.”
A screenshot from the Russian Interior Ministry's website, indicating that Sergei Ezhov is currently “wanted under charges filed under the Criminal Code.”
Speaking to Mediazona, Ezhov said the reason behind his wanted status could have been justified — in the Russian authorities’ eyes — by “anything”:
“Non-compliance with ‘foreign agent’ rules, cooperation with ‘extremists’ (meaning Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation), or with ‘undesirables’ (The Insider). From the point of view of [the Russian] authorities, journalism itself is already a crime.”
Responding to the news on his Telegram channel, Ezhov wrote:
“I’m now officially more dangerous than corruption, poverty, and criminal oligarchs — the three pillars of the [Putin] regime all at once. When you are declared wanted by a state where the judiciary and the investigative bodies are headed by Putin’s former classmates, it is not a sentence — it is a mark of quality. I am accused of interfering with the Kremlin junta’s efforts to rob the people and hold onto power by force.
When a country is run by hypocrites, war criminals, and underground billionaires — this is not a bad thing. It’s like a medal ‘for fighting the mafia,’ where the mafia is the state handing out the award. Well, they do hand out medals to generals — for embezzlement.”
He then accused the Russian authorities of behaving like occupiers, denying people the right to oppose their nominally elected officials — or their decisions. “That’s why the fight against this regime is a war for independence,” Ezhov concluded. “Thank you for once again acknowledging that.”
The Russian Ministry of Justice designated Sergei Ezhov as a “foreign agent” on July 5, 2024. In response, the journalist released a message to his readers, promising to publish an alternative list — the “registry of malicious actors” — every Friday, naming individuals featured in his investigations, as well as their associates.
The latest entries, made on April 11, 2025, include Vladimir Putin’s aide and Russia’s former Minister of Education Andrei Fursenko and his brother Sergei — both members of the “Ozero” cooperative, the exclusive dacha community where Putin, then a deputy mayor in food-scarce St. Petersburg, owned a summer home next to the properties of prominent Bank Rossiya shareholders.
English translations of Sergei Ezhov’s investigations can be found on The Insider’s website via the following link.
The Ozero cooperative, founded in 1996 near St. Petersburg, was a community of summer homes (dachas) that united Vladimir Putin and several close associates — including Sergei and Andrei Fursenko, Rossiya Bank majority shareholder Yury Kovalchuk, and former President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin — into a formal network. Many of its members later rose to powerful positions in business and government, forming the core of Putin’s inner circle.
The Insider was declared an “undesirable” organization in Russia in July 2022. Prior to the designation, it was also recognized as a “foreign agent.”