The things Dmitri A. Muratov says from his newspaper studio in Moscow would cost most Russians years in prison. In videos posted on YouTube, he has spoken of his country’s “self-fascization.” As Russia embraces a militaristic ideology, he has said that torturing those who do not adhere to the Kremlin’s worldview has become “a declaration of love for the homeland,” while dying as a soldier has become “more important than life itself.” He has called for the release of political prisoners and compared the conditions in which they are held to those in the gulags (the Gulag was a vast Soviet network of forced labor camps).
While hundreds of other Russian journalists fled into exile after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Muratov stayed. He is one of the few in his country who still dares to call a spade a spade, using his platform to act as a public conscience. Muratov, along with others, was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his work “defending freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions.” The award has given him some protection, but it has also made him a target. In 2022, assailants threw red paint and acetone in his face, in an attack that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was orchestrated by Russian government operatives. Muratov underwent four surgeries and now requires a magnifying glass to read. A year later, he was officially declared a “foreign agent,” which technically prohibits him from practicing journalism.
Still, he has found ways to continue his journalism. He self-publishes a magazine, printing no more than 999 copies – at least officially – which keeps it below the legal threshold of being “mass media.” (He also distributes digital copies.)
JOURNALISTS IN EXILE
Muratov, 64, said he was driven by the belief that, with institutions that only simulate democracy in Russia, the role of the media has become even more important. “The media has taken over the function of parliament,” he said in a recent interview at his Moscow office. He used the war as an example: “Eighty percent of Russians are in favor of a ceasefire,” he said, giving an assessment of growing war fatigue in Russia that somewhat exceeds the results of a recent poll. “But in a parliament of 450 deputies, not a single one represents this position. So today it expresses itself through the media.”
When he accepted the Nobel in December 2021, Muratov gave a scathing speech against war, denouncing the “powerful” who “actively promote the idea of war” until it becomes acceptable to the people.
The Kremlin initially congratulated him on the award. But a few days later, President Vladimir V. Putin warned: “If he uses the Nobel Prize as a shield to violate Russian law, then he will do so deliberately to draw attention to himself.” In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Within weeks, it became a crime to call what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” a war, or to disseminate information about the fighting that did not come from state institutions. “Discrediting” the Russian armed forces is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. More than half of Muratov’s colleagues at the newspaper he helped found in 1993, Novaya Gazeta, fled into exile. They created a new branch, Novaya Gazeta Europe, based in Riga, Latvia.
“They work there without readers, but without censorship,” he said of the new branch. “We work here with censorship, but with readers.” While Novaya Gazeta was forced to cease operations in Russia, Muratov is doing everything he can to continue publishing the work of the remaining journalists.
When the NYT reporter visited the newspaper’s offices, he showed her the magazines he had recently published, which dealt with topics such as pro-Kremlin Ukrainians settling in Russia, deepening censorship and the spread of fatalism in society. “This is our samizdat,” he said, referring to the banned literature and news that was once printed secretly during the Soviet era and distributed only within trusted circles. The magazine was once called “Gorby,” after the newspaper’s friend and supporter, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who died in 2022. After it was banned in September, Muratov began publishing it under the name Urbi et Orbi, a reference to the papal blessing, which coincidentally rhymes with the old name. (“Urbi et Orbi” means “To the City and the World”). Muratov’s office wall is lined with covers that Novaya Gazeta would have published if it were still allowed to print. He showed one of his favorites, titled “Hitler is Not Home.” It featured a photograph of American war correspondent Lee Miller bathing in Hitler’s bathtub in his Munich apartment during the liberation of Germany in 1945.
“We work for peace,” Muratov said, giving a kind of mission statement and describing activities he said he would speak publicly about only after the war. “We work for Russian civil society. For us, the highest value is human life. We are resisting fascism.”
Sometimes, as he talked about the newspaper’s operations, he spoke in a low voice, pointing to the walls. Journalists working in Russia can never be sure who is listening. At one point, he interrupted the conversation to suggest a practical Novaya Gazeta device: a Faraday bag, which blocks the signals emitted by a phone and thus thwarts potential eavesdroppers. The attack on Muratov with paint and acetone occurred in April 2022, two months after the war began. He was boarding a train to his hometown of Samara, a large city on the Volga River, when he was attacked. The attackers shouted: “Muratov, this is for our boys,” a possible reference to the Russian military. His eyes were chemically burned. His designation as a “foreign agent” in September 2023 prohibited him from working as a journalist, as the state classifies journalism as an “educational activity,” and persons with this status are not allowed to carry out such activities.
“I can’t work as a teacher or professor at a university, I can’t take part in sociological surveys,” he said. “I can’t even make a bank transfer for a taxi driver, because I have to get his passport and send a copy to the Ministry of Justice, because he took money from me.” He had come to the interview by bicycle.
Muratov is now facing an investigation into the auction of his Nobel Peace Prize. It was sold in June 2022 for $103.5 million. He donated the proceeds to UNICEF, which then distributed more than $70 million to help refugee children from Ukraine. A prominent pro-Kremlin activist reported him to the authorities. They claimed that, since he had not kept the prize for at least two years, he should have paid about $16 million in taxes on the proceeds. The case is still under investigation.
ATTENTION TO POLITICAL PRISONERS
As he spoke to the reporter, Muratov tended to deflect attention from himself. He wanted to talk about political prisoners. He pulled out a large cardboard folder of photographs and continued to speak in the powerful, harsh, angry, and desperate tone he uses in his YouTube videos. According to the human rights organization Memorial, which awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, there are about 1,475 such prisoners in Russia.
“I think about this every day, every minute,” he said. “I can’t sleep.” “I’m constantly thinking about Lyosha Gorinov,” he added, using a nickname for opposition politician Aleksei Gorinov, who was jailed for opposing a children’s drawing competition, saying he was unfit during the war in Ukraine. He has lost part of a lung and was recently diagnosed with tuberculosis. “I’m thinking about what Zhenya Berkovich is like and how much she weighs now,” Muratov continued, referring to a playwright and poet imprisoned for a play she helped stage against terrorism. He showed a photo of her before her arrest and another recently, saying her weight had dropped significantly.
He also spoke about Nadezhda Buyanova, a 69-year-old pediatrician who is serving a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for criticizing the war in Ukraine. He condemned the cruelty of a “patriotic activist” who had sent her 20 kilograms of salt – the maximum weight of the monthly packages – to deprive her of food and vitamins.
Muratov said the West is violating Russians’ “fundamental, basic human rights” by embracing a narrative of collective guilt, blaming all citizens for the war, which he calls “democratic fascism.” This is one reason he no longer considers himself an optimist. “Hope is always about the future,” he said. “I don’t think about the future at all. You have to do what you can now to help people, help political prisoners, make a package, write a letter, publish an issue of the newspaper, support readers.” “We don’t plan anything more than a day ahead.” (Koha.net)