On Sept. 25, a Moscow court sent the political analyst Alexander Kynev to pretrial detention for "large-scale illegal drug production, sale, and trafficking" — a charge that could land him in prison for 10–20 years. But no evidence of Kynev's involvement in illegal drugs has been made public.
A leading expert on regional political processes and electoral systems, Kynev has long reported on election fraud in Russia, though he openly supports the New People party, which was launched in 2020 as a