Ekaterina Glikman
First Deputy Editor-in-Chief
Novaya Gazeta Europe

In April 2024, Novaya Gazeta Europe turned two years old. Until February 24, 2022, most of us worked at the famous Novaya Gazeta, Russia's oldest independent newspaper, whose editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. We are now scattered around the world, but we continue as journalists to tell Russians the truth about the war and the country.

Talking about what war does to people is forbidden in Russia. The word "war" is also forbidden to use. Showing people who want to live, not die, is called discrediting the army and is criminalized.

For two years we have been working in exile. For two years we have been outside the reach of Russian censorship, calling the war a war and not marking with asterisks the names of people labeled by our state as "foreign agents," that is, enemies of the people.

We have freedom, but we no longer have a homeland. We cannot return home. We have been called a criminal - undesirable - organization for our ordinary journalistic work. Personally, as a person in charge, I face up to six years in prison.

Any dictatorship is built this way so people know nothing and depend on the state. In fact, that is the point of censorship. We provide them with information on which they can base their decisions: to support the army or not, to flee abroad or not.

Our readers have lost the habit of reading us on public transportation from their phones - it's dangerous: someone can see what you're reading and report it. They don't "like" our posts or comment on them. They read us secretly and silently. And if they risk talking about what they read, they do so in whispers. Any dictatorship makes people voiceless. So we become their voice.

Moreover, our media is a representation of anti-war Russians (they are not represented anywhere else). We are their parliament. We are their resistance.

And yet, while we may seem like something more than media, we are not: we are just journalists working according to our professional standards, which are no different from Finnish journalistic standards.

It's just that the conditions in which we work are quite exotic for our European colleagues. What we do inside the country can be called " partisan journalism". The anonymous correspondents of Novaya-Europe, whom we carefully hide under pseudonyms (otherwise they risk going to jail), travel all over Russia and share with our readers in their reports what they see with their own eyes. They take comments and interview anonymous experts (experts also risk going to jail for cooperating with us). They describe the stories of anonymous characters (and the reporting characters, too, risk freedom by talking to our journalists). But the war and censorship will end, and we will give our brave journalists their names back.

When Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, among other thoughts and emotions, we independent Russian journalists had the feeling that we had failed.

Putin has never played by the rules. There have never been any lines that he wouldn't cross. He has lied and killed all these years. This is the reality that my colleagues and I have been living in for these twenty plus years. And all this time we have been trying to communicate it to the world, to get through to the world’s decision makers. Apparently, we failed. We have not been heard either within the country or in the world.

Even our worst signals - the murdered journalists - were not heard. The disappointment and pain of this is not easy to bear. However, the journalists of Novaya-Europe are motivated to continue.

Because the story of the newspaper where Anna Politkovskaya worked cannot end. There is no force to stop the work she started.

I believe that Russia's free media is the social institution that has coped with the last two years better than any other. Hundreds of media outlets left the country and, under conditions of urgent emigration, very quickly resumed their work from abroad. We did not leave our readers on their own to face the dictatorship. Of course, we are also driven by the desire to keep our professional dignity and remain professionals, but the main mission of Russian journalists in exile is to help people through dark times.

The article was originally published in Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat on 17 April 2024.

Baltic Sea Region Forum is organised on Monday 20 May 2024 at the University of Turku with the theme The NATO 2024 and Arctic Europe. The Forum can also be followed online. Programme and more info can be found on the event site.