A journalist from KhMAO who was convicted of investigations went to war

Eduard Shmonin, a journalist from the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, sentenced in 2021 to eight years in prison after a series of investigations into the corruption of local deputies and oil embezzlement, went to war against Ukraine. In a conversation with Sibir.Realii, he stated that he had “never been in the opposition.”

Shmonin signed a contract with one of the PMCs of the Russian Ministry of Defense back in the spring of last year, after some time he received a shrapnel wound and went to the hospital.

“First of all, I have always been a patriot, this is the main and main motive, and secondly, it is a very gambling game where my life is at stake. This is about journalism,” Shmonin explained the reasons for participating in the war.

The journalist was known for criticizing the authorities of Ugra, the district heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. Shmonin is the creator of the portal “Chinovnyk.ru” and “Public Television of Ugra”, which published materials about oil theft with the participation of FSB officers in the capital, as well as about corruption in the ranks of officials. Many materials were dedicated to Governor Natalya Komarova.

In 2019, Shmonin was charged with 13 counts of defamation, extortion, and distribution of pornography. Only two were sentenced. The first is about extortion from Nefteyugansk Duma deputy Yevgeny Vostrykov. According to the investigation, Shmonin demanded money from him for not publishing the film “Bloody Deputy” about the fact that in the 1990s Vostrykov allegedly traded drugs, shot one brother, poisoned another, beat his wife and children who fled from him abroad, and all this the information was published on Shmonin’s resources for four years before the release of the film.

The second charge was for the distribution of pornography. Shmonin was accused of publishing a video in which Nizhnevartovsk Duma deputy Vadym Nikandrov had sex with another man. According to Shmonin, the video is the result of operational work, he received it from the governor’s assistant, but did not post it on the Internet.