Oleg Roldugin enters Day Ten of pretrial detention at Petrovka 38 in central Moscow with his pretrial-custody window — May 10 — now three weeks out. [1] The paper's Day Nine report from Sunday named the gap between Russian independent coverage and Western broadsheet silence. Day Ten does not close it.

The facts have hardened since April 9. Roldugin was detained at his apartment before a 13-hour raid on Novaya Gazeta's newsroom. [2] The Tverskoy District Court remanded him into pretrial detention on April 10 until May 10 on suspicion of illegal personal-data use under Part 3 of Article 272.1. [3] On April 14, he was formally charged with "illegal access to computer information" as part of a group. [1] The charge carries up to six years. Novaya Gazeta's line — that the search warrant gave no reason and no proprietary personal-data offense has been specified — is the paper's claim and the Committee to Protect Journalists' echo. [1]

What the West is still not covering is the link between the raid and Roldugin's February 21 investigation of a former Kadyrov aide's penthouse purchase. Meduza, The Insider, Moscow Times, and Mediazona have all noted the timing. [1] [4] No Anglophone broadsheet has filed on the charge as of Sunday evening European time. The paper's Moscow position holds: silence in one capital's press does not reduce the risk profile for the journalist in another capital's cell. Day Ten adds a week of that silence.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow