A democratic Russia appears far-off as Vladimir Putin further entrenches his authoritarian rule.
As Russia’s war on Ukraine rages on, the regime of President Vladimir Putin continues to crack down on political and civil society opposition, ban independent media, and infuse society with nationalistic and militaristic propaganda.
Journalists face the constant threat of imprisonment and even death for their work – the fear of which they say has grown since the death of anti-corruption activist Aleksei Navalny earlier this year and Putin’s victory in the 2024 presidential elections, in which no opposition candidate was allowed to stand.
“What is happening in such moments [as Navalny’s death] is that you just understand how you are small in front of the system,” said Ekaterina Martynova, publisher at the exiled Russian youth journalism outlet, DOXA. “If they can kill him, what can happen with others?”
With Russia’s further slide into authoritarianism, journalists are grappling with what role, if any, independent news can play to promote a democratic future for the country.
To find out, I spoke with Russian journalists in exile who, despite the odds, are working to set the foundation for a democratic future for Russia.
By engaging young people and building a new generation of pro-democracy journalists, re-centering Indigenous and ethnic minorities in conversations on Russia’s future, and “saving history” for future generations, they’re showing how journalism can have an impact even in the most authoritarian of societies.
Reaching young people
In the face of vast amounts of State propaganda targeting young people, independent outlets that can engage young Russians with credible reporting are invaluable.
DOXA, an exiled youth journalism platform that originated as a student-run publication covering campus issues at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, is uniquely positioned to fill this role. The outlet’s reporting, carried out by young Russians, informs fellow young people in the country about the forms propaganda is taking – from pro-war “Z comics” to its inclusion in standardized testing – in an increasingly nationalistic information ecosystem.
“If we are covering [propaganda] and showing our audience that, look, this is what is happening and this is where we are going, people will have more understanding and more of a clear picture of what they will do with [this information], what their own actions would be, what their community would do,” said Martynova.
DOXA is no stranger to persecution by the Kremlin, which has had the outlet in its crosshairs ever since it reported on mass demonstrations against the disqualification of independent candidates during the 2019 Moscow State Duma elections. In 2022, four of its founding editors were sentenced to correctional labor in connection to a video they published about Navalny’s incarceration. That same year, DOXA was banned in Russia and its team forced into exile.
Despite the attempts at censorship, the outlet’s readership surged at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “We grew five or six times at that moment [of the invasion]. Our Instagram became a key point of information and coverage of the full-scale invasion,” Martynova said. “We stopped being just students. We positioned ourselves as a media for the young people.”
As DOXA continues to burst the propaganda bubble for its young readers, it’s also developing young people to become pro-democracy reporters. The outlet mentors early-career journalists, helps them get published, and offers support finding scholarships and humanitarian visas to enable travel to Europe.
“If there would be no place for these young journalists to work, they would just go and work for the State propaganda, or they would just stop doing any type of writing in journalism,” Martynova said.
Given the deterioration of freedoms in Russia, training these journalists must take place over the long term, stressed Martynova.
“When it comes to the future of democratic Russia, you cannot just teach the new generation of journalists in one month or two,” she said. “You need to have this work be done consistently over the years.”
Centering Indigenous democratic movements
In January 2024, mass protests broke out in the Turkic-majority Republic of Bashkortostan, located north of Kazakhstan between the Volga river and Ural Mountains, after the leader of an environmental and Indigenous rights movement was arrested. The demonstrations were among the largest against the Kremlin during its war on Ukraine.
“The most successful nonviolent revolutionary movements in Russia’s neighborhood have been based on grassroots self-mobilization,” wrote Tatar journalist and Bashkortostan native Leyla Latypova. “At least one such movement exists in Russia today. Not in Moscow, but in Turkic-majority Bashkortostan.”
Latypova, a former special correspondent for The Moscow Times, centers Indigenous and non-ethnic Russians in her reporting – Tatars, Bashkirs, Indigenous Siberians, and others – populations often left out of conversations on Russia’s future.
She has written about past attempts at regional democracy, Indigenous activism in the shadow of Kremlin repression today, and how international actors can support Indigenous rights and local democracy in the future.
The aim, Latypova said, is to “fill the information gap” of Russia’s Republics and Indigenous people, especially for international journalists, politicians and activists. By raising awareness of what is happening in the Republics for non-Russian audiences, Latypova is helping push international actors to consider a more inclusive Russia in the event of a democratic transition.
“There's curiosity among Western politicians for just trying to understand what the hell is happening [in the Republics],” she said, pointing to the activism by non-ethnic Russians outside the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, in particular. “People in Bashkortostan have done something that everyone expected from Muscovites. That didn't happen in a vacuum. That's kind of a very, very long process of developing civil society that was simply ignored and also underreported.”
It's a conversation that needs to happen now, Latypova said, as activists and journalists envision what a post-Putin future could look like. “When we talk about democratic Russia, we have to consider a possible type of Russia. We have to talk about Indigenous rights. It's uncomfortable, but that conversation needs to happen,” she said.
“Saving history”
Russian investigative outlet iStories seeks to “save history” itself through its reporting.
Founded by 2020 ICFJ Knight Award winner Roman Anin, the outlet reports on issues such as how Russia uses its censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, to target those critical of Putin, and how Russian families, including politicians, are adopting kidnapped Ukrainian children.
“[Our reporters] are constantly investigating the horrible atrocities by the Russian army in Ukraine, or simultaneously the horrible crimes in Putin's regime against its own people and against Russians,” said Anin. “It's what I call ‘saving history.’”
As the Kremlin honors war criminals in Bucha, spreads disinformation about attacks that have killed children in Ukraine, and even rewrites the history of Soviet-era crimes, creating a record of what actually is happening in Russia and its occupied territories in Ukraine is instrumental for countering narratives coming out of the Kremlin. “It is about proving [facts] and bringing justice to victims, including horrible crimes,” Anin said. “This is the top impact you can think about.”
Anin believes iStories’ reporting can help set a foundation for future efforts to hold bad actors accountable. Already, the U.K. government has used the outlet’s investigations to support sanctions it levied on Russia.
It can also inform future generations of the extent of crimes committed in Ukraine and occupied territories, Anin said. “[The responsibility of] journalists is to see this history so that the future generations can know what was really happening in Russia,” Anin said. “[Later] generations can at least know what was going on and maybe try to avoid those mistakes.”
Up against far-reaching authoritarianism today, these journalists are holding out hope for a future democratic Russia. The foundation they’re helping lay today they hope will prepare the next generation of activists, pro-democracy politicians, and journalists.
“I do believe that this probability does exist [for a democratic future], because I know that there are dozens of millions of Russians who condemn the war,” Anin said.
“Our forces are limited but, by doing what we do, we increase the probability [of a democratic Russia] to be above zero.”
Photo by Klaus Wright on Unsplash.
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