Page 34 - bne magazine September 2023

34 I Cover story bne September 2023
caused the stir is still available online, but without the photo.
Around the same time, during the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections, a number of independent news websites experienced outages on election day, including Kommersant. The OSCE’s election monitoring mission noted this incident in a report, writing that "Kommersant provided a wider variety of views, while devoting most of its predominantly neutral and negative coverage to the current administration and ER” [Putin’s political party, United Russia – bne IntelliNews].
The discrepancy between the EU’s recent statements about Kommersant and the other positive assessments of its work underscores the contradictory nature
of some of the sanctions, which were arguably imposed on the basis of little more than hearsay or unconfirmed media reports. However, a tacit confirmation that no one seriously considers Kommersant to be "pro-Kremlin" is the fact that, unlike a number of blatantly propagandistic Russian media outlets, the newspaper itself is still not on either US or EU sanctions lists.
The most authoritative attempt to lay out the web of connections between big Russian businessmen and the Kremlin was Catherine Belton’s book Putin People, but half a dozen oligarchs sued the publisher HarperCollins, including Usmanov (who didn’t go to court, but got the publisher to retract the most salacious accusations). A number of passages had to be rewritten or cut
as the courts ruled that some of the accusations were unfounded. As bne IntelliNews reported, dozens of English- language newspapers have also found themselves in the same position after being sued by oligarchs whom they accused of being “close to Putin” and lost their cases in British libel courts.
Calls and the law
Russia’s leading newspapers have not been afraid to occasionally take on the Kremlin and openly criticise the state. After the well-known investigative reporter Ivan Golunov was arrested on trumped up drug charges in June 2019, Russia’s three leading newspapers – Vedomosti, RBC and Kommersant – took the provocative decision to run identical front pages saying “I/We are Ivan Golunov” to protest against the arrest and show solidarity. The charges were dropped. Golunov was released and the arresting officers were investigated.
Being a journalist in Russia has always been a dangerous job, but in the last two years since the repression went up a gear those dangers have escalated dramatically.
Ivan Safronov was a highly respected Kommersant defence reporter who
in 2020, after moving on to become an advisor to the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, was arrested and charged with espionage for reporting on what he claims had been public information. Last September, he was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum security prison. Within days of his sentencing, the Kommersant editorial
team took the bold action to post a letter of protest in support of their former colleague, themselves risking the opprobrium of the Kremlin.
This July, Novaya Gazeta investigative reporter and human rights defender Elena Milashina was attacked on her way to a Chechen court hearing. Images of her in the wake of a brutal beating, with her head shaved and covered in antiseptic green dye, caused widespread outrage.
In the three decades this correspondent has been covering Russia, foreign correspondents have largely been left alone to do their job. But in March 2023, Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges and has already spent more than 100 days in jail awaiting the start of his trial that could see him given a life sentence. US President Joe Biden said in the middle of July that the White House is actively working on a prisoner swap deal. Prior to Gershkovich’s arrest, the only high-profile incident involving a foreign correspondent was the murder of American correspondent Paul Klebnikov in July 2004 that was widely seen as linked to a book he wrote, The Godfather of the Kremlin, about the 1990s oligarch Berezovsky, a former owner of Kommersant.
How are Russian journalists able to
work in such a toxic environment? The knee-jerk assumption is that the Kremlin micromanages the media. While it has full control over the TV stations where the bulk of the population get their information, Russia’s private newspapers continue to have a great deal of freedom and many, but not all, try to report the story straight, though this can still get them into deep trouble.
Russian journalists interviewed for this article from a variety of top outlets, who remain nameless due to the sensitive nature of the topic, told bne IntelliNews that it is very rare for an article to be retracted or heavily amended once it was released – and if then only because there was some factual error, not for political reasons. If the Kremlin has an issue with an article, the journalist, not the article, is targeted.
“I/We are Ivan Golunov” front pages.
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