The Investigative Committee of Russia released the top managers of the Eksmo publishing house after interrogation under an obligation to appear. This was reported TASS in law enforcement agencies. Information confirmed RBC in the publishing house. General Director Evgeny Kapiev and three more Eksmo employees delivered for questioning on April 21 in the case of the activities of an extremist organization in relation to the publishing house Popcorn Books.
According to the TASS interlocutor, top managers will have to return for questioning to the Investigative Committee on April 24. They still have no status in the case, law enforcement agencies clarified. In addition to Evgeny Kapyev, investigators interrogated financial director Svetlana Tsyplyaeva, deputy editor-in-chief for literature Yulia Sokolovskaya and distribution director Anatoly Norovyatkin.
Testimony against top managers of Eksmo given defendants in the Popcorn Books case, who are under house arrest in a case filed in May 2025. According to investigators, employees of the publishing house “Individual Print”, part of Eksmo, printed and sold books promoting LGBT people (“the international public movement LGBT” is recognized as extremist in Russia and is prohibited). We were talking about the books “Summer in a Pioneer Tie” and “What the Swallow is Silent About.” Popcorn Books went out of business in 2026.
As Kommersant wrote, the investigation’s claims against Eksmo are that the publishing house continued to distribute the books “Summer in a Pioneer Tie” and “What the Swallow is Silent About” after the “LGBT movement” was recognized as extremist and banned in 2023. In “Eksmo” explainedthat “several dozen such books” were not reflected in warehouse balances and were sold by the publishing house for some time.
Read more in the Kommersant article. “It’s about the pioneer tie”.
