Z-blogger Tatsiana Mantyan sentenced to 1.5 years in prison. She called for violence against "a social group of individuals 'akhranota'"

The Voroshilovsky interdistrict court in occupied Donetsk sentenced 54-year-old Z-blogger and lawyer Tatsiana Mantyan to one year and six months in a general regime penal colony. She was accused under the article on calls for "extremism" (part 2 of article 280 of the Criminal Code), writes "Mediazona".

Along with the real term, the court also banned Mantyan from administering websites for two years. The state prosecution demanded five years in a penal settlement for the blogger.

The case against Mantyan was initiated in September 2025.

The reason was the phrase "eliminate akhranota without any remorse," spoken during a stream in December 2022.

In her arguments, the prosecutor stated that, according to a linguistic examination, these words contained "a call for violent actions against a group of individuals referred to as 'akhranota'."

The state prosecutor also mentioned the conclusions of another comprehensive linguistic and psycho-linguistic examination, according to which Mantyan's phrase "incites in the form of a call" to violent actions against "a social group of individuals 'akhranota'."

Mantyan herself and her supporters explained that "akhranota" was her term for bloggers who silenced problems at the front for the benefit of the authorities, and "eliminate" meant to ban bots in the comments of the broadcast.

"The biggest shame they spread was that we steal donations. For days they told everyone: they are stealing by the trainload. They are stealing, they are not reporting. People tell them, look, all their publics are filled with reports," Mantyan said. "— [People said], what do you want from them? No, such people [akhranota] were banned. This is roughly the situation in which we three conducted this stream, which is now being imputed to me."

After the case was initiated against Mantyan, Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the "Safe Internet League," wrote that her organization had appealed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs because "a large number of citizens" complained about "discrediting the army" in the blogger's publications. Earlier, Mantyan was also criticized by propagandist Vladimir Solovyov and his channel's employee Boris Yakimenko. According to them, she stole money received during fundraisers for Russian military personnel.

Mantyan was born in Crimea and worked as a lawyer in Ukraine. In 2015, she was added to the database of the Ukrainian website "Myrotvorets" for legal assistance to military personnel from the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR.

In 2023, a criminal case was opened against Mantyan in Ukraine for calls to overthrow the constitutional order, encroachment on the territorial integrity of the country, collaborationist activities, and justification of Russian aggression against Ukraine. Her appearances on Russian propaganda channels and publications on social networks were cited as evidence.

According to the SBU, Mantyan moved to Russia in 2021. In January 2023, she became a columnist for the "Specially for RT" channel. According to Mantyan, she earned 4.5 million rubles (today 54 thousand dollars) during 13 months of work there.

She also regularly appears in Belarusian pro-government media.

She wrote about her detention as follows: after rehabilitation in a Moscow hospital, people in balaclavas rushed at her, forcibly put her in a car, and brought her to an apartment for a search.

"They said we will take you to Donetsk with a pillowcase over your head, and bury you along the way. If you don't open the door, we'll break it down, and it will remain open. I understood that I was in a hopeless situation and opened the door. After that, they showed me a search warrant based on the fact that I called to 'eliminate the guards' on a stream," the blogger indignantly recalled.

From the conversations of the law enforcement officers, it seemed to her that they hoped to find "deposits of money, gold, diamonds" in the apartment — for example, they constantly tapped on the walls.

"I was just laughing, saying, well, tap on that wall, you haven't checked there yet. Saw, Shura, saw, golden weights," Mantyan recalls.

After some time, according to the Z-blogger, investigator Bogdan Bondarchuk "threatened her with all terrible torments and said that she was behaving in vain, that it would be better if she submitted and obeyed, because some drug addict would kill her in the pre-trial detention center anyway."

Speaking in court on the last day, she continued to criticize her opponents in the Z-sphere: "Of course, all Ukrainian cesspools are now just shouting with happiness. What will happen to traitors like Mantyan? Well, did you make a deal at the UN? Did you make a deal on federal channels? Did you make a deal from columns in media like RT? You'll get it! This is what your Muscovites did to you, and you deserve it. I repeat, who did this, I don't understand, but these people are definitely enemies of Russia and do not wish it victory."

She currently remains free under a travel ban until the verdict comes into force.

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