[1][2][6] Since 2016, Kotov has been known for his political activism and was an organizer of a picket in support of the imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov in 2018.

In April, the Moscow City Court upheld the sentence but reduced Kotov's prison sentence to 18 months and his term was recalculated to include his time served in pre-trial detention (where one day equals 1.5 days served at a corrective colony).

[5] In December 2019, Kotov was chosen by readers of Vedomosti as Person of the Year in the Private Individual category.

[11] In December 2020, Kotov was awarded the Moscow Helsinki Group Prize for courage in protecting human rights.

[8] In October 2019, Kotov married Anna Pavlikova, his co-defendant in the New Greatness case [ru], while he was being held at the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center.