Russia included the author on Monday Boris Akunin, who has been living in exile since 2014, in the list of personalities he features “terrorists and extremists”, in the latest example to date of the crackdown targeting critics of the Kremlin.

Under his real name, Grigory Tskartishvili, the author was added to that list by Rosfinmonitoring, the Federal Financial Supervisory Service, AFP found.

“The terrorists declared me a terrorist,” he wrote on Facebook.

An investigation into him for defamation of the military was launched last week, a source familiar with the case told the Interfax news agency today.

Born in 1956 in Georgia, then a Soviet republic, the novelist is a writer known in Russia for his historical detective novels, mainly for his series of books starring Erast Fandorin, living in the tsarist era.

He is also the author of the “History of the Russian State”, which examines in nine volumes the development of the Russian state up to the Revolution of 1917.

Akunin had spoken out in 2014 against the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, before going into exile in London, where he has lived ever since.

On February 24, 2022, he criticized the outbreak of an “absurd war” on Facebook. “Insanity Won”, he wrote then.

“Russia is governed by a mentally deranged dictator, Mray, even worse, he obeys his insanity,” this man of letters still wrote.

Then he was one of the founders of the program “Nastoïachtchaïa Rossia” (“True Russia”), supported by many cultural figures who are in exile and opposed to the Russian attack on Ukraine, with the aim of helping Ukrainian refugees.

Many NGOs and media have complained since 2022 a cultural cleansing in Russia by demoting, firing or fleeing abroad artists who had criticized the Russian attack on Ukraine or who had not publicly supported the regime. Others were also jailed. Instead, the government encourages, funds and promotes artists and cultural productions that support its attack on neighboring Ukraine and its increasingly conservative and nationalist discourse.