Prudovskaya Lidiya Dmitrievna

In the town of Mirny, Arkhangelsk region, in the summer of 2023, a criminal case of repeated "discrediting the army" was brought against local resident Lidia Prudovskaya. The reason for criminal prosecution were several posts in "VKontakte".

According to the investigation, the woman posted on her closed page in the social network "VKontakte" reposts and text publications containing a negative assessment of the actions of the Russian military. In particular, it was about publications with Leonid Gozman's statements about the strikes on Kiev, Alexander Nevzorov - about the crimes in Kherson, as well as materials concerning the events in Bucha. The law enforcers considered that these materials were aimed at undermining trust in the armed forces and convincing users of the "aggressive" and "criminal" nature of their activities.

On July 24, Prudovskaya was served with a search warrant, which ultimately never took place. On July 31, her children, aged nine and ten, were questioned as witnesses in the presence of a psychologist and a representative of the guardianship authorities; their mother was not allowed to see them.

On August 2, Prudovskaya was given a non-deportation undertaking. Later she left the country.

Earlier, in September 2022, Prudovskaya was fined in an administrative offense case under the article on discrediting the RF Armed Forces. According to the court ruling, in April and June 2022, she published eight entries on her VKontakte page, including about the Russian president and military personnel.

On March 19, proceedings in the case were suspended due to the fact that the defendant went into hiding. On March 24, 2024, the court arrested Lidia Prudovskaya in absentia.

In April 2024, the guardianship authorities unilaterally terminated the contract with Prudovskaya. Her lawyer was notified about it only in August. In the fall of the same year, the police declared her adopted son wanted as "missing," although the woman had been raising him since he was 11 months old.

On June 6, 2025, the Mirny City Court of the Arkhangelsk region found Lidia Prudovskaya guilty and sentenced her to a fine of 200 thousand rubles.

On August 11, 2025 the Arkhangelsk Regional Court left the amount of the main punishment unchanged, but changed the sentence in terms of the fate of physical evidence: the appeal instance decided to confiscate the phone "iPhone" XR in a black case belonging to the convicted person into the property of the state, and the second seized device - "iPhone" 14 - to return to the owner. The court did not satisfy the prosecutor's direct request to arrest Prudovskaya after her detention in Russia.

In January 2026, it became known that a criminal case was opened against Prudovskaya for unlawful deprivation of liberty of a person unrelated to his abduction. According to the investigation, she "kidnapped" her adopted 13-year-old son Yevgeny.