Alexander Vaskovsky, a Russian pro-war blogger and former member of the self-proclaimed “Supreme Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic,” has been detained in St. Petersburg, according to a post published on his Telegram channel on April 13.
The post said an administrative protocol had been drawn up against Vaskovsky under the charge of “discrediting the army,” the result of two posts published in January 2024. In one of them, he criticized the “newly minted elite” of Donbas and wrote about corruption. In the other, he commented on a proposal by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to have sanctions lifted from his relatives in exchange for the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
On April 14, the blogger said he was free and awaiting trial. According to Vaskovsky, he enjoys support among law enforcement officers in St. Petersburg, though he said he ran into difficulties with lawyers.
“I am free and do not plan to change my way of life. There will be some kind of court, which I am sure will show our strength over our enemies. It turns out there are a lot of people among St. Petersburg’s security forces who are potentially on our side. The same can’t be said for the lawyers, almost all of whom we had to tell to get lost,” Vaskovsky wrote.
In 2014, Vaskovsky was part of the apparatus of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic.” He later moved to St. Petersburg. The pro-war blogger regularly criticizes the Russian authorities on his Telegram channel.
Pressure on pro-war bloggers in Russia, including on so-called “war correspondents,” ramped up in 2025. Like anti-war activists on the opposite of the political spectrum, many Kremlin loyalists now face prosecution under laws on extremism, spreading “false information,” and “discrediting” the military. Several pro-war figures, including blogger Roman Alekhin and pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov, have also been labeled “foreign agents.”
