Arian Romanovsky, the former editor-in-chief of Tatler’s Russian edition who was convicted of extorting Rostec head Sergei Chemezov, has been released from prison.

Olga Karpoot, an entrepreneur and founder of the KM20 store, published photos from a dinner she shared with Romanovsky at Jun, a Japanese restaurant in Moscow. “My dear friend Arian, who is carefully rediscovering Moscow after a long absence, wanted his first dinner after returning to be here,” she wrote.

Anonymous Telegram channels also reported (1,2) on Romanovsky’s release. The exact date is unknown, but on May 18, society columnist Bozhena Rynska published a photo of Romanovsky spotted at the Okhotny Ryad shopping mall in Moscow.

Romanovsky was arrested in October 2022 for extortion and sentenced in February 2024.

The defendants in the extortion case, alongside Romanovsky, also included Ksenia Sobchak’s former commercial director, Kirill Sukhanov, and Life journalist Tamerlan Bigaev. All three were arrested in the fall of 2022; the investigation was launched following a complaint by Chemezov himself. According to investigators, Sukhanov demanded 11 million rubles from the Rostec chief in exchange for blocking the publication of negative material in the Telegram channel Tushite Svet (Romanovsky produced content for it, while Bigaev administered the channel). Ksenia Sobchak later apologized to Chemezov for her “colleagues’ actions.”

In February 2024, Sukhanov was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, while Romanovsky and Bigaev each received seven years. The court later reduced their sentences: Sukhanov’s to five and a half years, and Romanovsky’s and Bigaev’s to five.