Putin's stranglehold on the Russian press

Spectator

a day ago

Since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, the Russian press has been slowly, methodically strangled, which has forced existential choices on newspaper and TV journalists. Twenty-one have been killed – beaten, poisoned or gunned down. Others, such as Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, highly regarded investigative reporters, have been forced into exile. Yet others, like the 'dear friends' of this book's title, have chosen a different path – to cleave ever closer to the regime. The authors tell the fascinating story of those choices and allow us a glimpse of why they were taken.
In 2000, Soldatov and Borogan were employed by the political department of the newspaper Izvestiya, where they made new friends – slightly older and more experienced journalists, whom they envied for their access to people in power and admired for their intelligence and bohemian glamour. This group's ideas about Russia seemed a bit 'retro': Petya Akopov envisaged the country as a spiritual power, in contrast to the West's moral decadence; Zhenya Baranov had pan-Slav leanings; while their patron, Evgeny Krutikov, was obsessed with the secret services. But at the time these views appeared eccentric, provocative and certainly harmless.
At first, Izvestiya was free enough to allow some criticism of government policy; but after barely six months, Soldatov and Borogan were squeezed out by increasing demands to toe the Putinist line. As they arrived at the office to clear their desks, they noticed a new employee – a nondescript, secretive man with no media experience. Just ten years after the 1991 putsch, the security services were back on the editorial floor.
Moving from publication to publication, the pair found ways to get into print for most of the next decade. In the unlikely pages of Versia, the offshoot of an unscrupulous tabloid called Sovershchenno Sekretno (Completely Secret), they published an exposé of the official account of the Nord-Ost crisis, in which hundreds of hostages trapped in a theatre by Chechen suicide bombers were gassed by the security services. The FSB responded by harassing them and the paper for months, and this set a pattern. Subsequent employers crumpled under pressure from above. Each time the pair published a too-truthful report they'd be out on the street again.
For some years, interestingly, the principle that the press should act as a check on state power still held true among their 'dear friends' from Izvestiya days, who helped them get articles printed. And for a while both Akopov and Krutikov were even happy to cooperate with Soldatov and Borogan on the website they'd set up, Agentura.ru, providing analysis and comment on Russia's security and intelligence services.
In 2008, the authors' efforts to investigate the murder of their colleague Anna Politkovskaya got them sacked from their final paper. Bravely, they clung on in Moscow, writing books for PublicAffairs, their New York publisher, that were later translated into Russian. 'It felt as if we and our friends had discovered some sort of arrangement whereby we could coexist with the country's political regime.' One day, the liberals hoped, Putin would be gone and things would return to 'normal'.
Their Izvestiya friends, meanwhile, had gone a different route, straight to the heart of the regime. By 2014, Baranov was a presenter for Channel 1, the Kremlin propaganda channel, pushing a narrative of Nazis in Ukraine and Nato aggression, while his wife crossed the barely discernible line between state and press to become deputy minister of culture the following year. Akopov is now known as the author of a triumphalist essay, published in February 2022: 'Putin has resolved the Ukrainian question.' It was swiftly removed from the internet when the Ukrainians stopped the Russian army outside Kyiv. All three are subject to sanctions.
Why did these intelligent, well-travelled people agree to be the mouthpieces for state misinformation? Basically it was their only option if they wanted to stay in Russia and work as journalists. Financial need and family and health pressures weighed on them, as on anyone, and general lawlessness and corruption in Russia encourage conformity in all but the bravest. The emotional hangover of the Soviet Union is also considerable – nostalgia for the USSR's former status, the certainties of their childhood and family trauma working themselves out in complicated ways.
Perhaps even more significant is another Soviet legacy – a profound cynicism that reasserted itself, as powerfully as ever, once Putin's direction was clear. Many of the propagandists are connected to Soviet dynasties such as the Mikhalkovs, who seem quite comfortable with telling lies in return for success and comfort.
Trying to gauge the views of ordinary Muscovites, Soldatov and Borodan noted a collective determination to enjoy this rare moment of Russian prosperity without rocking the boat. Their interviewees often clammed up, snapping: 'We just want to trust our security services!' Yet almost before people had noticed, the Russia they knew had been transformed 'from a highly globalised and aspirational society to a dismal walled-in fortress'. In a flash, the moment when they could have chosen another future had passed.