Elena worked for Novaya Gazetta, the last independent newspaper in Russia.
She covered corruption, prison violence, gay rights and Chechnya.
This isn’t a job for the faint of heart. She has been stalked, arrested and beaten on many occasions. Her newsroom was harassed daily. In fact, 4 of her colleagues were murdered under her watch.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper was shut down. She left Russia and moved to Eastern Ukraine. She started systematically documenting war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians
https://femantiwar.org/en/interview-kostyuchenko/
She was forced to leave after Ukrainians warned her that Russian soldiers put a bounty on her head. (you can use english subtitles)
Then, a few weeks later, she was hospitalized.
Her food was poisoned in an attempt to kill her:
Elena miraculously survived and kept reporting.
She now teaches at Duke University in the US. When asked if she is afraid, she said the following:
Elena is one the bravest person I know.
When you think about it, people living in Western Democracies don’t know how good they have it. You can create a labor union in your company. You can run for mayor in your town. You can join an NGO and sue large corporations. Yes you can.
In my life, whenever I lack inner strength to do the right thing, I always think about her
I worry that
- ICE now knows where she is
- they have a quota
- their boss is a Russian asset and wants a pat on the head
Can we get her to safety before they grab her and ship her back to Vlad?
The last time she fled to safety, Putin poisoned her anyway. Then she reported on her own assassination, went to Trump’s America and wrote a book on how Putin is fascist. She clearly made a decision, and I respect the hell out of it.
I kinda feel so ashamed of myself knowing that I would never be able to be this brave…
Tough lady. Hats off to her.
Several people from Novaya Gazeta founded the offshoot Novaya Gazeta Europe, which continues to work from Latvia, in both Russian and English.
I recommend donating to them if you’d like to support independent reporting in Russia, seeing as Russians and Russian advertisers can’t do that anymore.
Meduza is another outlet that could use your support. They were previously known as Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru, both of which were captured by pro-government oligarchs. Meduza, in contrast, is owned by its journalists. They were likewise persecuted by the government and had to move out sometime before 2022, so now also can’t take money from Russia despite living on donations and grants.
A couple others are Mediazona and Important Stories.
The original Novaya Gazeta also seems to be current and uncensored, even though they previously stopped in 2022 and apparently work from Russia according to the site’s footer. Dunno anything about that.
InB4 someone talks about how big her balls are
Cool lady tho, thanks for the post
what balls
Toby from The West Wing would find this strange.
I don’t wish to make too many tangential top-level comments, so I am declaring this the tangential thread, but all I can think of is that America is on a path where someday we’ll also have journalists who will literally have to choose between the truth and their own safety. We already have so many who choose lies over the truth when their safety is not questioned.
Lots of journalists have come and gone that feared for their safety in the US. The only new thing about trump is how transparent all the corruption overreach and abuse of power has become.
Not just transparent. How aggressive and prevalent.
It has always been there, but it is much, much worse right now than any time in the last 50+ years.
