How to help Russian journalists in exile – Media

Two days after the Russian army invaded Ukraine, special police officers pushed Matvei Golovanov into her car. They “caught” him, he says in broken English. The 23-year-old Russian from Yekaterinburg reported in the video call that he did nothing more than film an anti-war demonstration. That’s his job: Golovanov works for RusNews, a dissident medium that mainly broadcasts on Telegram and Youtube; there it has more than 170 000 subscribers. The journalist is now sitting in a hotel room in Istanbul. He managed to escape, but Golovanov, with a three-day beard and long black hair, still hangs his head. His voice almost fails him when he thinks back. After the arrest, an express court sentenced him to 28 days in prison. “I’m not a tough guy, not like Navalny,” he says, referring to the imprisoned Russian opposition leader. “It was really a tough time.” He was kept awake with bright lights, and during the day a radio played “terrible music and propaganda” at full volume. When he got out, he buried himself at home – out of fear. It took another two weeks before he risked leaving the country.

Matvei Golovanov is one of hundreds of journalists who left Russia because President Vladimir Putin’s regime made it impossible for them to work. Or they may even be pursued and imprisoned. At the beginning of March, the Russian government filed an urgent procedure a restrictive media law pushed through, which President Putin tightened a few weeks later: anyone who henceforth spreads “false information” about what is happening in Ukraine, i.e. deviates from the Kremlin narrative, or who uses the word “war” alone, faces up to 15 years in prison. Gradually and turned on the Russian censorship Roskomnador critical mediasuch as the radio station Echo Moscow. Also the traditional newspaper Novaya Gazeta suspended operations until further notice.

While independent Russian journalism is dying at home, it is rebuilding abroad. In the Georgian capital Tbilisi, for example, four young journalists are currently working on a new video channel in an improvised studio. Three of them previously worked in Moscow for a network magazine, the fourth for the famous one TV station doschd. Such editorial offices in exile are of great importance because they are best able to break through domestic propaganda and – despite censorship – reach Russians. But setting it up costs “a lot of time and money,” says Kirill Martynov. He should know, because at the end of April, together with others, he called the Novaya Gazeta Europe into life, a European spin-off the newspaper harassed in Russia. More than 50 journalists now work there.

Her office in the Latvian capital of Riga was co-financed from a pot of money that had never existed in this form before: The JX fund is intended to provide emergency aid for media workers in exile by creating structures for them to work – and as unbureaucratically as possible. That can mean: paying flights, finding office space, networking media with each other, helping to set up editorial offices. So that they “can continue quickly and flexibly,” explains Christian Mihr, Managing Director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF). His NGO set up the fund together with the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the Schöpflin Foundation at the end of March. In the meantime, it has really taken off: according to RSF, eight foreign media and thus more than 120 journalists have been granted aid so far. RSF does not want to influence the reporting. “We are not an implementation organization,” says Mihr. What if journalists in exile suddenly spread propaganda? “That can only be answered in the specific case.” A five-strong expert council checks the independence of the inquiring media, they should not be connected to any party or government organization.

Many applications for the fund are currently coming from Russia, others from Ukraine and Belarus. Among them are media in exile that do not report on the war at all, but rather on education, the environment or archaeology. The media workers who have now left Russia because of repression are quite scattered and mostly where they can get to easily: Georgia, Latvia, Turkey, but not in Germany. Summarize the reason for this Novaya Gazeta Europe-Boss Martynov in two words: “German bureaucracy”. So far, endangered Russians have only been able to enter the Federal Republic with a Schengen visa. They expire after a maximum of three months, which prevents journalists from taking up their work in the long term.

Now the federal government has decided to grant a visa to persecuted Russians in “individual cases” for humanitarian reasons via the Residence Act. “This will make entry easier and speed up the procedures significantly,” promised Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). When asked, a spokeswoman for the ministry specified that the regulation applies to people “who are particularly at risk of political persecution in Russia.” For example, journalists, human rights defenders and scientists are entitled. It remains unclear what will happen to those who already have visas. Can the “Schengen visas that have already been issued be converted into work visas?” asks Christian Mihr, RSF Managing Director. He’s skeptical. Also as far as the individual case regulation is concerned: “From experience” he fears that this could be interpreted “restrictively”. Despite all this, Mihr believes Faeser’s announcement to be “a kind of breakthrough”. Also new is that the Minister of State for Culture and Media, Claudia Roth (Greens), has a say in the admissions process. During the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which local helpers and other endangered people initially found it difficult to obtain German visas, only the Federal Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior made the decision. It remains to be seen whether the new cultural player will actually purge the procedures.

Matvei Golovanov is hearing about the fund for the first time, so far he has been fighting his way through on his own. “In Russia I was all alone,” says the escaped journalist. Does he want to keep working? “Yes, I could start.” He has everything he needs: camera, mobile phone, he shows his press card. But actually he wants to go back to Russia and work there. “But I can’t do that now.” Two weeks after being released from prison, Golovanov spotted his name on a list on a pro-Putin Telegram channel. The headline: “Traitors of Russia”. At that moment he decided to leave his homeland.