Yan Katelevsky is a blogger and journalist. He has one minor child. He used to do carpentry and repair work.

Together with Aleksandr Dorogov, for at least five years they published their materials criticising the authorities and journalistic investigations of corruption, criminality and police misconduct. Katelevsky's channel hosted more than 500 videos, with 300,000 subscribers and more than 100,000,000 views. It is believed that one of the aims of the arrest was to remove all bloggers' investigations from the public sphere.

In 2015, after a conflict with the local household services over the illegal operation of the car park, Katelevskys' cars were burnt, but the investigation failed to find the people responsible for the action.

The last investigation published by the two journalists concerned the raiding of the funeral business in the Moscow region and the possible cover up by the Moscow region police. In 2018, the bloggers demanded that expired products be removed from sale in a shop.

Immediately after the arrest, Katelevsky's YouTube channel was shut down, all high-profile stories were destroyed, and relatives of the detainees were forced to sign a paper about the non-disclosure of investigative material. In this way, his colleagues say, the entire evidence base of the video investigation was erased.