Mikhail Afanasyev is editor-in-chief of the Internet magazine Novyi Focus in the Siberian Republic of Khakassia. He is a two-time winner of the Andrei Sakharov Prize 'For Journalism as an Act' and the first foreign winner of the Swedish Publicists' Club Award.

Afanasyev has been tried in Khakassia about 20 times, most of them unsuccessfully. In 2013, he was tried for slandering Colonel Zlotnikov, deputy head of the Interior Ministry. The court acquitted Afanasyev. The journalist claimed that he had received repeated death threats and said that criminal pressure on journalists was not an accident, but the result of the Russian authorities' policy.

It seems that local law enforcement agencies had a long-standing interest in stopping the activities of an independent journalist. The current charge against Mikhail Afanasyev was brought on the basis of a text dated 4 April 2022 about why 11 soldiers of the OMON of Rosgvardiya OMON in Khakassia refused to take part in the war in Ukraine. He did not admit his guilt.

Mikhail Afanasyev has five minor children.