Since March 4, 2022, there are no independent media in Russia. This is not hyperbole. The few media outlets that had withstood years of government pressure and harassment were censored or declared illegal, if not voluntarily shut down. No media was spared: Echo of Moscow even suffered a particularly cruel fate. The editor-in-chief of this centrist radio station, Alexei Venediktov, made it a point of honor to maintain good relations with certain government heavyweights, but that was not enough to save the station. To top it all off, Margarita Simonian, the editor-in-chief of RT, announced with some glee that the station’s old frequency had been assigned to Radio Sputnikthe government propaganda outlet she heads.
When I arrived in Riga on the morning of March 4 – after crossing the Russian-Latvian border on foot – I discovered that access to the news site Jellyfish, of which I lead the investigation cell, was also blocked. If I left Russia, it was partly because rumors of an imminent proclamation of martial law were circulating in Moscow. Such a measure would almost certainly lead to the suspension of most civil liberties, including that of the press, and probably also to the closure of borders. We are not – yet – there, but we have never been so close.
“Overwhelmed with shame”
A few hours after the blocking of Jellyfish and other news sites, the Russian Parliament passed a law that criminalizes my profession. Journalists who spread “false information” on “special military operation” of Russia – in other words, who cover the conflict in a factual way, starting by calling it a “war” – now face up to fifteen years in prison. It is now forbidden to cite sources other than the Russian Defense Ministry that reports of civilian casualties in Ukraine are false, since the Russian military only carries out surgical strikes on military targets and that is kyiv bombing its own citizens to frame Moscow for war crimes.
The presenters of the last chain of
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