St. Petersburg court orders exiled journalist Alexander Nevzorov and his family evicted from their former home

St. Petersburg’s Primorsky District Court ruled in favor of Russia’s Federal Property Management Agency and ordered journalist Alexander Nevzorov, his wife, his son, and his 83-year-old mother-in-law evicted from their former home in Lisy Nos, a settlement in the northern part of the city.The court ruled that they no longer had the right to use the house and canceled their residence registrations there.In December 2024, a St. Petersburg court ordered the confiscation of a plot of land and a house in Lisy Nos belonging to Nevzorov’s mother-in-law, Natalia Kolesnikova. She had bought the property from her daughter Lidia in August 2023, but the court invalidated the sale.Alexander Nevzorov and his wife, Lidia, left Russia after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian authorities later targeted Nevzorov: They designated him a “foreign agent,” and a court sentenced him in absentia to eight years in prison for spreading “fake news” about the military. He and his wife were also declared an “extremist association.” The state confiscated their property in Russia. In the spring of 2025, authorities opened a criminal investigation into the couple on suspicion of financing extremism because they had solicited donations for themselves.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.