The criminal case against employees of the now-closed publishing house Popcorn Books was opened after books were sold to an underage buyer who, according to Mediazona, acted on instructions from security officers. This follows from the case materials concerning former sales director Pavel Ivanov, now under review in Moscow’s Zamoskvoretsky District Court.
Ivanov, former Popcorn Books director Dmitry Protopopov, and Artem Vakhlyaev, an employee of Individuum and Popcorn Books, were detained in May 2025. They were first placed under house arrest, then released a year later under a ban on certain activities. All three are defendants in an “extremism” case tied to queer literature. Ivanov is charged with recruiting people into an extremist organization and participating in one.
According to the indictment, Popcorn Books published LGBT-themed young adult literature. After Russia banned the “LGBT movement,” prosecutors say the defendants created a mechanism to bypass the restriction in order to sell books remaining in the Eksmo warehouse worth tens of millions of rubles. Investigators say they compiled a “red” list of already banned books and a “yellow” list of titles that could attract scrutiny from the authorities.
The prosecution says books from the first list were meant to be sold only abroad, while those from the second were to be distributed in Russia. It also alleges that the group’s activity within Eksmo was aimed at involving minors in the “LGBT movement.”
One of the grounds for the case was an order for 50 books from the “red” list placed in January 2024, in which one of the buyers was a girl born in 2006. Another order from a minor born in 2008 was placed between January and March 2024. In the case materials, she is explicitly identified as a participant in a controlled purchase.
It also emerged in court that in the summer of 2025 Ivanov entered into a pre-trial cooperation agreement with investigators and, in the wording of the case, gave exhaustive testimony against himself and the other defendants. In court, he confirmed that he agreed fully with the charges and said he did not name the unidentified Eksmo representatives, although, in his words, they were the ones who “drew us into this activity.”
During closing arguments, prosecutors asked for a four-year suspended sentence for Ivanov. In April 2026, several Eksmo executives, including CEO Yevgeny Kapyev, were detained but released after questioning. According to sources cited by Russian media, testimony against the top managers was given by Protopopov, Vakhlyaev, and Ivanov.