The libel case against Lipetsk Region Governor Igor Artamonov over a report on Mikhalkov's program "Besogon TV" aired on the Rossiya 24 television channel is gaining momentum. Almost all of the local Center E staff are working on it. They can't reach Mikhalkov himself, so they're arresting those who are weaker and hinder local authorities. They posted a recording of the report on their own websites.
According to the VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Pavel Sokolov, a Yelets public figure and the main enemy of local officials, is in custody in connection with this story.
Pavel is a former member of the Yelets City Council and the Lipetsk Regional Council for three terms. Incidentally, according to his asset declarations, he was the poorest member of the regional council.
At one time, he publicized information about the property of Yelets Mayor Viktor Sokovykh, who demolished an old house at 55 Gorky Street, occupied by a kindergarten, and illegally built a mansion on the vacated 20-hectare plot. This was confirmed: the Yelets prosecutor handed the materials over to the Investigative Committee, but no criminal case resulted. This may be because Sokovykh was a friend of then-Governor Korolev.
Recently, Sokolov has been critical of Governor Artamonov and his protégé, Yelets Mayor Borovskikh (who was dismissed thanks to Pavel Sokolov's investigations). His materials even led to the imprisonment of two of Borovskikh's associates involved in embezzlement of tenders. Thanks to the "Yelets right-winger," criminal cases were opened against Bricheyev, Head of the Yelets City Administration's Roads Department, and Bozhanov, CEO of Yelets-Doroga LLC.
On October 17, 2025, Besogon TV aired a story in which Eduard Kiryanov, a businessman from the Lipetsk region and owner of EKOPTITS, told Nikita Mikhalkov about Artamonov's constant extortions to a certain Lipetsk Region Social and Economic Development Fund, managed by JSC Development Corporation.
Kiryanov stated that after refusing to pay the fund 40 million rubles, Artamonov began to obstruct his business in every possible way, pressuring him and effectively banning the construction of a plant with a capacity of over 50,000 tons of poultry meat per year.
Soon, a post appeared on a small channel in the city of Yelets with a link to the Besogon TV story.
On October 29, 2025, at 8 a.m., a large group of officers from the Center for Extremism of the Lipetsk Region Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, including the Center's First Deputy Chief, Alexander Perepelkin, and riot police, broke into the home of 75-year-old Yelets resident Natalia Polyakova.
As a result, an old computer, laptop, flash drives, a voice recorder, and other items were confiscated.
The pensioner's son, Gennady Makarov, was forcibly taken to the Lipetsk Region Directorate of Internal Affairs, where he was held for... a day (without any formal documentation of these "activities").
Here's how Gennady himself describes what happened: "They demanded that I write a confession admitting that this Telegram channel belonged to me." At the same time, they tried to "scare" me, saying that they would set me up, that I would be "f**ked," that they would lock me up for "treason," put me in a "rooster" cell, put a "violent rooster" next to me, or put me in a cell with only Chechens or Dagestanis (A.S. Perepelkin said this at least 3 times), and that they would humiliate me there, so much so that right now they would dunk my head in the toilet... Timkov, the head of the Center for Combating Extremism in the Lipetsk Region, came to that very same operatives' office on October 29th at approximately 7 p.m. and said to me: "Sit down and write a confession, we'll give you a written undertaking not to leave, otherwise there will be a criminal case for treason." I have never heard so much rudeness and swearing every other word in my entire life. ... Maxim Popov, who was also present, told me: "...we can plant the murder weapon on you. We currently have a knife in our safe from the Usman murder case; your fingerprints could be found on it. And your card could be used to make a payment to the account of Maltsev (Artpodgotovka), a recognized terrorist whose identity you don't know—and that's treason." Perepelkin also said that I should record my apology on camera, that I repent and apologize, that I "recognize the current constitutional order, the current president, and support the SVO."
Later, it turned out that this whole spectacle was precisely because of that very post with a link to Mikhalkov's program. Investigators believed the man had ties to the channel. And on October 29, a criminal case was opened under Article 128.1, Part 5 of the Russian Criminal Code—for defamation against Artamonov, Governor of the Lipetsk Region.
Artamonov was very offended by Mikhalkov's program, but the latter regularly meets with Putin. So he decided to take it out on the residents of Yelets, who were suspected of running the channel, setting the entire leadership of the local Center E and riot police on them.
Following Makarov, Center E officers raided Pavel Sokolov's home. He was believed to be the channel's administrator. However, arresting him specifically for slandering former Sberbank executive and caviar party enthusiast Artamonov would have created unnecessary publicity. So, they dusted off the old complaint against Sokolov.
This story goes back almost eight years The underlying reason. Back in 2016, the Yelets administration declared the dilapidated apartment buildings in the area unsafe and slated for demolition. Residents of the dilapidated buildings were relocated only... in 2023. The buildings themselves were left standing. Sokolov wrote extensively about all these stories. Based on his publications, the prosecutor's office (here's a photo of city prosecutor Eldar Amanov looking sadly at the abandoned buildings) ordered the city administration to demolish the buildings. The tender for demolition and garbage removal was won by Smena LLC (founder and CEO Olga Chebotareva), a company close to the local authorities. But nothing changed—the abandoned buildings remained standing. Sokolov wrote extensively about this again. As a result, the prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit demanding that the city administration demolish the dilapidated buildings. Only in 2025, under the supervision of the prosecutor's office and under the weight of court decisions, were all these buildings finally demolished.
In the fall of 2024, the management of Smena LLC filed a complaint with law enforcement, alleging that Sokolov had demanded money from them. There was no evidence to support this, so no criminal case was opened.
Immediately after the "slander" against Artamonov, the complaint was brushed under the rug, and an extortion case was opened. Sokolov, who has a small child and a pregnant wife, was sent to pretrial detention.
The Investigative Committee of Russia even issued a press release without Sokolov's name, stating that an extortion case had been opened. The slander case against Artamonov was bashfully omitted altogether. Sokolov's pretrial detention was recently extended.
