https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/03/12/house-arrest-for-sasha-mitroshina

Blogger Alexandra Mitroshina is now under house arrest in Moscow after pleading guilty on Monday to money laundering charges. At her arraignment, she confessed to laundering 127 million rubles (roughly $1.5 million) in unpaid taxes through Moscow real estate purchases. Journalists from the news outlet Mediazona attended Mitroshina’s hearing, and Meduza summarizes their observations below.

Alexandra (Sasha) Mitroshina is a Russian celebrity blogger with more than 2.7 million followers on Instagram. She’s used her status to bring attention to various issues, including the “I Did Not Want to Die” campaign against domestic violence. On the platform, Mitroshina has also sold lessons on social media promotion and growth, marketing her own “Instalogy” courses and other training programs, including fitness classes. Mitroshina’s media activity has been lucrative; Forbes journalists report that she earned 303 million rubles in 2021 (more than $4.1 million at the time) — twice as much as the year before.

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mitroshina moved to Dubai and opened a dance school and a podcast studio. A year later, Russian federal investigators launched a case against her for tax evasion, arguing that her earnings exceeded the threshold required to remain in Russia’s simplified system, which shields lower income brackets from VAT and personal income taxes. Mitroshina had allegedly distributed her income across multiple sole proprietorships to continue filing under simplified taxes.

Mitroshina later said she’d “not paid enough attention to accounting” and made a simple mistake. She even proposed developing an app to help other bloggers manage their tax payments, and the evasion case was eventually closed.

However, on March 7, police arrested Mitroshina at the Sochi airport shortly after she returned to Russia. “She said her lawyers assured her that everything was fine and that all tax issues had been resolved, but she was still worried and unsure about whether to come back,” a source told Forbes.

Five relatives and roughly 20 journalists attended Monday’s arraignment. Mitroshina’s defense attorney was Mikhail Mushailov — the same lawyer defending Ksenia Karelina, the dual U.S.-Russian citizen arrested for transferring $50 to a Ukrainian charity. Mushailov told the court that Mitroshina had settled a tax debt of more than 200 million rubles by selling all her property in Russia, adding that she returned to Russia oblivious that she was wanted by the police. “As of now, she has no outstanding debts to the tax authorities,” he stated, adding that his client has paid a total of 666 million rubles ($7.8 million) into the state budget.

“To put it simply, I fully acknowledge my mistakes and do not intend to obstruct the investigation or trial,” Mitroshina told the court. “I was unaware that buying an apartment could be considered money laundering, but I do not deny that this is the case.”