Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court has begun hearing the case against former Popcorn Books sales director Pavel Ivanov. Mediazona’s correspondent reported this from the courtroom. The other defendants are Dmitry Protopopov, one of the managers of Popcorn Books and Individuum, and Artem Vakhlyaev, who oversaw the warehouse and book distribution.
The defendants were detained in May 2025, placed under house arrest, and a year later released under a ban on certain activities. They are charged with organizing the activities of an extremist organization and participating in it. Investigators say they published and sold books containing what law enforcement describes as “LGBT propaganda.”
Reading out the indictment, prosecutor Ksenia Potyagailo said Popcorn Books specialized in LGBT-themed young adult literature. She cited the novel Summer in a Pioneer Tie and other titles. According to the case file, after public backlash in the summer of 2022, staff discussed with Eksmo in September removing several books from sale.
The prosecution argues that by no later than December 2023, immediately after the ban on the “LGBT movement,” the defendants decided to sell off remaining stock worth tens of millions of rubles. According to the indictment, Protopopov sent staff a message about shipping books from the “red list.” Those titles were to be removed from the publisher’s website but kept on sale through other retail channels, creating a mechanism to обход the ban.
The case mentions a “red” list of books already considered banned and a “yellow” list of titles that could raise questions. According to prosecutors, books in the first category were to be sold only abroad, while books in the second, including Heartstopper, were meant to continue circulating in Russia.
Investigators say the scheme was also aimed at involving minors. In January 2024, Ivanov received an order for 50 books from the red list, and one of the buyers was a girl born in 2006. From January to March 2024, another order came from a minor born in 2008, who is explicitly identified in the indictment as taking part in a controlled purchase operation.
The prosecution also refers to a shipment of books sent by bus to Azerbaijan and sales through Avito, where officers also carried out a controlled purchase. According to the indictment, the books were shipped from the Eksmo warehouse and processed through “shadow accounting,” while company management tracked the sales in real time and received regular reports.
“I considered it my civic duty to testify against people who were engaged in and are still engaged in anti-state activity,” Pavel Ivanov said in court.
In the summer of 2025, Ivanov entered into a pre-trial cooperation agreement and, according to the prosecution, gave exhaustive testimony against himself and the other defendants. In court he fully admitted the charges and said he was prepared to testify against Eksmo employees, including director Yevgeny Kapyev. Kapyev and other publishing managers were detained in April 2026 in a similar case and later released after questioning under an obligation to appear.