Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court on March 9 dismissed an appeal from Kloop, upholding the October 2025 declaration of the outlet as “extremist.”

The publication’s lawyer, Nurbek Toktakunov, said that the court reviewed the case very quickly. In comments published by Kloop, Toktakunov said, “judges follow orders from above that favor the ruling group, they are given the opportunity to profit from corruption and rob the people.”

On October 28, 2025 a court in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, declared Kloop – alongside TemirovLive and Ait, Ait Dese – as well as the activities of the outlets’ founders, Rinat Tukhvatshin and Bolot Temirov, respectively, “extremist.”

Kloop, an award-winning investigative media outlet, learned of the decision from social media. The outlets’ representatives were never summoned to the court. Toktakunov said that the courts and security services knew he represented the outlet and Tukhvatshin, but never attempted to contact him and inform them about the upcoming hearing. 

According to Kloop, “the specific materials examined by the experts and ultimately deemed extremist by the court are not listed in the verdict.” There is also no distinction between materials produced by Kloop and by TermirovLive, two different media outlets with different founders and separate work.

This conflation was also key to the sentencing of two former Kloop cameramen in September 2025 to five-year prison terms (later reduced to three years’ probation) on charges that they conspired to incite “mass unrest.” The five videos cited as evidence in that trial were produced by TemirovLive, not Kloop. Expert witnesses in that case struggled to clearly define the materials cited as directly calling for mass unrest.

In its October 28 statement about the extremist declaration, Kloop noted that “[i]t is now dangerous to like, comment on, or share these publications’ content, as doing so could be considered support for an extremist organization and the dissemination of extremist materials.”

Kyrgyzstan has witnessed a dramatic deterioration of press freedom in recent years, from a global ranking of 72nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ 2022 Press Freedom Index to 144th by 2025.