Mizulina Ekaterina Mihailovna

Member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, head of the “Safe Internet League”

Ekaterina Mizulina was born on September 1 1984 in Yaroslavl. In 2004 she graduated with a bachelor's degree in art history and Indonesian from the University of London, a fact that most official sources are silent about. In 2010 she graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Countries of Moscow State University, majoring in Orientalist-African studies and before that, in 2008, she worked as a Chinese translator for the Russian delegation at the Olympic Games in Beijing. In 2010 Mizulina began volunteering and was responsible for charitable projects at the St. Basil the Great Foundation, owned by the oligarch and propagandist Konstantin Malofeev. The fund itself has been under Ukrainian sanctions since 2018. At the end of 2017 Ekaterina Mizulina was appointed director of the Association of Market Participants in the Internet Industry “Safe Internet League”, which deals with censorship of artists and bloggers, and in 2018 she became executive director of the association of organizations and citizens providing assistance to missing and injured children “National Monitoring Center for Assistance to missing and injured children." Since 2020, starting from the seventh convocation, Mizulina has been a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation.

In 2023, on the wave of “popularity” among young people, she organized a tour in Russian regions with meetings with students at universities. During her speech in Yekaterinburg one of the students asked Mizulina how long she could continue to engage in censorship, an activity prohibited by the Russian constitution. The student also asked her why Shaman singer did not serve in the army, to which Mizulina threatened him with a criminal case for discrediting the Russian army. In Kazan a student began asking Mizulina questions about her denunciation in response to her speech about “the information war unleashed by the enemies of Russia”. Mizulina tried to start chanting “Russia,” calling the Tatars Russians, but the hall of students began shouting “Tatarstan.”

Public justification and support for the war in Ukraine and restrictions on freedom of speech in Russia

As the head of the “Safe Internet League” Mizulina regularly writes denunciations against bloggers and rappers who may go against the policies of Russian authorities. According to the “Verstka” media, as of December 4, 2023, Mizulina wrote denunciations against 166 people minimum. 14 of them ended in administrative cases. For example Yuri Dud, Russian opposition interviewer was accused of promoting drugs and LGBT and fined 220 thousand rubles based on her denunciation. Morgenstern rapper, also for promoting drugs, was fined 100 thousand rubles. 4 of the denunciations written at that time ended in criminal cases. On August 12 2023 a businessman from Kazan was arrested under Article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code on inciting hatred for calling Russians “Rusnya”. In December of the same year his arrest was extended. On November 22 singer Charlotte was detained at the airport following Mizulina’s denunciation, and in December the court charged him of rehabilitation of Nazism and insulting the feelings of religious people. The reason was that the singer burned his Russian passport and appealed to the Ukrainian authorities with a request to let him into Kyiv.

Ekaterina Mizulina supported the lawsuit of the Ministry of Justice demanding that the “International LGBT Social Movement” be recognized as extremist.

Mizulina actively supported the war in Ukraine in the public space and justified the Russian invasion. In April 2022 she called on the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor to check Wikipedia for a criminal offense in connection with the publication of information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the articles in question were “Battle for Kiev”, “War crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, “Shelling of a hospital in Mariupol”, “Bombing of the Mariupol Theater” and “Massacre in Bucha”. At one of her speeches Mizulina said that “first we will clear Ukraine of the Nazis and Banderaites, and then we will get to Google and Wikipedia.” Mizulina’s propaganda among young people is especially successful. In her Telegram channel Ekaterina Mikhailovna regularly posts pro-government posts. For example she stated that people who financially support the Armed Forces of Ukraine are connected with illegal casinos, saying that “most of the gambling projects are directly related to Ukraine.” In May 2023 Mizulina turned to the Ministry of Defense with a request to draft blogger Danya Milokhin into the Russian Army.

In October 2023, following Mizulina’s denunciation, a criminal case was opened against the opposition media “SOTA” on charges of defamation of the “Safe Internet League”. On January 29 2024 Ekaterina Mikhailovna was added to the EU sanctions list for “serious and systematic violations of freedom of expression.”