Censorship under Putin
Censorship in the media
When I started this website in 2006, there were still a few independent news media in the Russian Federation on which I could rely to find objective and verified information about most of the facts that occurred before or behind the scenes of public life in Russia.
But the country was rapidly sliding back to the level of the former Soviet Union in terms of openness and democracy: Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev had already been convicted in a show trial and their company Yukos had already been divided among Vladimir Putin's loyalists and intimates, the critical journalist Anna Politkovskaya had been murdered a few days earlier, and a few weeks later the former spy Aleksander Litvinenko would die as a result of poisoning. Since Putin took office in 1999, 84 journalists had already died, either violently or in mysterious circumstances.
Meanwhile, all independent news media disappeared, one after the other. Newspapers, radio stations, television channels that had emerged in an atmosphere of joy and liberation after the collapse of the Soviet Union were taken over, closed down or bullied out by the Putin regime and his circle of acquaintances, using not only political methods but also brutal violence and murders.
Novaya Gazeta
In terms of the number of political murders, Новая Газета [Novaya Gazeta] or The New Gazet is perhaps the biggest victim of the Great Purge that Putin has carried out since he came to power. Novaya Gazeta was already virtually the only independent newspaper in Russia at that time, for which, among others, the journalist Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (1958-2006), who was also known and respected outside Russia, worked. Former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev (1931-2022) helped to found the newspaper with the money he had received for his Nobel Peace Prize. Click the arrow below to read more about Anna Politkovskaya.
Mikhail Sergejeevich Gorbachov
The newspaper was independent and liberal-oriented and became one of the most important voices of the political opposition to the policies of the ruling party United Russia and President Vladimir Putin. He was known for his critical and investigative reporting by skilled and passionate journalists on Russian political and social news, the horrors of the Chechen war, corruption among the ruling elite and the increasing authoritarianism in Russia. In 2021, editor-in-chief B (°1961) received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.
Dmitry Andreevich Muratov
Novaya Gazeta was therefore one of the first and main targets of the Putin regime, and violence was not shied away from. Since Putin took office, seven employees of the newspaper have been murdered.
16 juli 2000 - July 16, 2000 - Igor Aleksandrovich Dominikov (1959-2000), journalist, was hit on the head with a hammer in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow. The client was identified by the newspaper as Sergei Dorovski, a former government official from the Lipetsk region, but he was not charged because «the limitations period in the case had expired».
Igor Aleksandrovich Dominikov
June 2, 2001 - Viktor Alekseevich Popkov (1946-2001), journalist, was murdered near the village of Alkhan-Kala in Chechnya, while delivering medical supplies to civilians. In 2002, the killers were identified as members of the gang of warlord Arbi Barayev, who was under the protection of the Russian security services.
Viktor Alekseevich Popkov
July 3, 2003 - Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin (1950-2003), deputy editor-in-chief. He investigated the FSB-orchestrated bombings of Russian apartments in September 1999, which helped launch the Second Chechen War and bring Vladimir Putin to power. Shchekochikhin was poisoned with radioactive material.
Yuri Shchekochikhin
October 7, 2006 - Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (1958-2006), a journalist, was shot in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow on Putin's birthday. On June 9, 2014, the killers were convicted, but the person who ordered the murder was never caught.
Anna Politkovskaya
January 19, 2009 - Stanislav Yurievich Markelov (1974-2009), a lawyer, and Anastasia Eduardovna Baburova (1983-2009), a trainee journalist, were shot dead in Moscow by a masked gunman. Baburova was known for her investigation of neo-Nazi activities in Russia.
Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova
July 15, 2009 - Natalia Khusainovna Estemirova (1958-2009) was first abducted and then murdered in Grozny, Chechnya. She collaborated with Anna Politkovskaya and was known for her investigations into murders and kidnappings in Chechnya.
Natalia Khusainovna Estemirova
After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Muratov declared that the newspaper would publish an edition in both Russian and Ukrainian in solidarity. Shortly afterwards, the newspaper itself suspended publication due to increased government censorship. A month later, a European online edition of the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta Europe, was launched from Riga. The website was blocked in Russia later that month. In July, the newspaper launched an online magazine, Novaya Rasskaz-Gazeta, which was also quickly blocked. On September 5, 2022, Novaya Gazeta's media license was revoked.
On March 22, 2022, editor-in-chief Muratov decided to sell the medal associated with his Nobel Peace Prize at an auction and donate the proceeds to UNICEF for the benefit of refugees from Ukraine. The medal sold for $103.5 million, the highest price ever recorded for a Nobel medal. On September 1, 2023, Muratov was declared a «foreign agent» by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
The Moscow Times
The English-language daily The Moscow Times, distributed free in Moscow and owned by the Finnish media company Sanoma, was also completely independent of the Kremlin, but it reached almost exclusively English-speaking expats and tourists.
The newspaper switched to online-only publication in July 2017 and launched its Russian-language service in 2020. In 2022, its headquarters were moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in response to restrictive media laws enacted in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. On March 17, 2022, the newspaper announced that it had been deemed a «foreign agent» by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
On April 15, 2022, Roskomnadzor blocked access to The Moscow Times’ Russian-language website after the newspaper allegedly published a «false report» about riot police officers refusing to participate in the invasion of Ukraine.
Radio Svoboda
Радио Свободная Европа - Радио Свобода [Radio Svobodnaja Jevropa - Radio Svoboda] or Radio Free Europe - Radio Freedom is not a truly independent broadcaster. It is an international non-profit radio broadcaster funded by the United States government.
Initially, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were two separate organisations, founded in 1950 and 1953 respectively. The first broadcast to the Warsaw Pact countries, the second directly to the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s it emerged that both organisations received their funding from the CIA. From 1971 onwards, funding was provided by the US Congress and in 1976 the two stations were merged.
After the failed coup in August 1991, the new Russian president Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1931-2007) gave permission to Radio Svoboda to establish itself in Moscow. He was impressed by the factual and truthful reporting by the station during the events. However, Yeltsin's permission was revoked by Vladimir Putin in 2002.
Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin
On 22 December 2013, Radio Svoboda published an article called The Putin File. In that file it was stated that the release of the former oligarch Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky (°1963) three days earlier had mainly come about under pressure from the German government. One of Germany's three secret services, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), would have had very incriminating information about Putin. Click on the arrow below to read more about Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The Putin File When Putin was still deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, he had close ties to the Russian mafia through the German-registered company Sankt Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG (SPAG). German Chancellor Angela Merkel (°1954) is said to have used this information as leverage for the release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. After all, Putin was closely involved with SPAG. He had been on the company's advisory board since its foundation in 1992. Coincidentally, in the same year 1992, Pyotr Olegovich Aven (°1955), as Minister of Foreign Economic Relations of Russia, granted Vladimir Putin the authority to act as a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Affairs in St. Petersburg. Aven is a confidant of Putin, and was the CEO of Alfa-bank, Russia's largest commercial bank, until 2022. In 2022, he resigned from the bank’s board of directors in an attempt to avoid sanctions.
From this new position, Putin was able to lend a helping hand to SPAG by granting export licenses for very large quantities of petroleum products, non-ferrous metals and other goods, and by importing food products. The goods were bought cheaply and sold expensively. Putin would later justify these practices by saying that he was looking for «non-standard ways to finance the municipal economy, primarily by providing the city with food». However, most of the companies with which he had signed contracts for the import of food products into St. Petersburg turned out to be shell companies. So most of the revenues did not go to the municipality, but to Putin and his inner circle. The term «food» must also be interpreted very flexibly: the intelligence services of several countries discovered that major channels for the supply of cocaine to Europe suddenly began to run via Russia. One such shipment was discovered in February 1993 near Vyborg in a container with imported Colombian corned beef. The cargo was found by the director of the FSB in St. Petersburg Viktor Vasilyevich Cherkesov (1950-2022), and then mysteriously disappeared.
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After Radio Svoboda published the above-described Putin File, the station was increasingly harassed by the Russian government, a situation that became even worse in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and provoked a conflict in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region. Radio Svoboda was included in the list of «foreign agents», and according to the new Russian laws, it had to mention this in every publication – which it did not. The company was therefore heavily fined. In the first six months of 2021, Roskomnadzor had drawn up 650 protocols against Radio Svoboda for a total amount of almost 250 million rubles. Correspondents were detained and intimidated, subjected to pressure, and even bullied out of the country.
Radio Svoboda was completely blocked during the massive Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On March 4, 2022 of that year, the Russian government filed for bankruptcy of the station due to the many outstanding fines.
Telekanal Dozhd and Echo Moskvy
Other well-known free media outlets included the radio station Эхо Москвы [Echo Moskvy] or The Echo of Moscow and the TV station Телеканал Дождь [Telekanal Dozhd] or Telechannel Rain. However, their story ended on March 3, 2022 after Roskomnadzor ordered to restrict access to Telekanal Dozhd and Echo Moskvy because of their coverage of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops.
Telekanal Dozhd was relaunched in July from studios in Latvia, but after several violations its license was revoked in December. However, the channel remained active via YouTube and received a Dutch broadcasting license in January 2023..
Echo Moskvy began broadcasting on YouTube immediately after Roskomnadzor’s decision, but because the channel was 66% owned by Gazprom Media, Russia’s largest media company, YouTube blocked the channel. Minority shareholder Aleksey Alekseevich Venediktov (°1955) started a spin-off YouTube channel.
Aleksey Alekseevich Venediktov
In September 2022, several former employees of Echo Moskvy launched an Internet media called Echo [ ru ], headed by former deputy editor of Echo Moskvy, Maksim Vladimirovich Kurnikov (°1984).
Maksim Vladimirovich Kurnikov
NTV
Perhaps one of the first major milestones in Putin’s control of the Russian media was the Kremlin’s raid on the TV station NTV. Founded by Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky (°1952) in 1993, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the station attracted the best and most high-profile journalists from the start.
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky
The channel introduced high professional standards to Russian television and provided sharp analysis of current affairs, becoming a benchmark for news reporting in the newly created Russian Federation. In keeping with the tradition of a free press, the station was also critical of Vladimir Putin, who was often featured in the weekly satirical puppet show Куклы [Kukli], or Puppets. That programme was made under license from Les Guignols de l'info of the French Canal+, and can be compared to the British Spitting Image of the channel ITV.
Putin, Yeltsin and Gorbatskov in Kukli
Initially, this critical approach was tolerated, but the episode of Kukli of 23 January 2000 changed it. The theme was Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober, a satirical novella by the German writer Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776-1822) from 1819. The main character is the ugly child Zaches, who looks like a mandrake, and was born with an ugly body and soul. The good fairy Rosabelverde, who feels sorry for him, casts a spell on him so that most people, especially philistines, no longer consider him ugly. A doll representing Vladimir Putin played the role of Little Zaches. A doll representing Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (1946-2013) was used for the role of the fairy.
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky
At that time, Berezovsky was the majority shareholder of the competing TV channel Первый канал [Pervy kanal] or Channel 1. Berezovsky was considered by many Russians to be the most lawless and unethical person among the oligarchs. They held him personally responsible for the economic collapse of the country. It was believed that he, like other oligarchs, had defrauded the government with his programme of privatisation. You can watch the above-mentioned episode of Kukli in its entirety here.
After the broadcast, Lyudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaya (1936-2019), the rector of the St. Petersburg State University, called for the show’s creators to be prosecuted. On May 11, 2000, the NTV offices were stormed by the tax authorities, accompanied by FSB secret police officers. (born 1952) began to systematically ban any critical reporting about the Kremlin.
Lyudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaya
As with other critics of the regime, Gusinsky was arrested and accused of fraud. A year later, on April 14, 2001, NTV was forcibly acquired by the state energy company Gazprom, after Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky had tried in vain to keep the station independent by offering to invest 200 million in it. The takeover by Gazprom immediately marked the end of independent reporting. NTV became one of the Kremlin's mouthpieces and General Director Vladimir Mikhailovich Kulistikov.
Vladimir Mikhailovich Kulistikov
Facts and Fictions from the Friday Meetings
Since the takeover by Gazprom, NTV has been participating in the so-called Friday meetings. These are weekly formal meetings with the press in the Kremlin, led by Vladislav Yurievich Surkov (°1964), where the press is told what to say - and what not to say - and how it should be «framed».
Vladislav Yurievich Surkov
A few striking examples of orchestrated reporting in the Russian media occurred in connection with the war in Ukraine. When, on 17 July 2014, the Malaysia Airlines flight number MH17 crashed near the eastern Ukrainian village of Hrabove in the Donetsk Oblast, the tragedy was initially not mentioned in the Russian newspapers. Later, when it could no longer be ignored, the blame for the crash was placed on the Ukrainian authorities. The furthest went was the TV channel Russia Today (RT), which quoted a Spaniard who allegedly worked for air traffic control in Kyiv. He allegedly personally saw the plane being shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. Fearing the Ukrainian secret service, he allegedly fled to Spain. However, the tweets with his «revelations» turned out to come from London.
Thou shall not tell the truth
As for the war itself, the Kremlin, and therefore also the Russian press, denied that Russian soldiers had been fighting in Ukraine since 2014. However, for some Russians this war was very close, because Russian soldiers were indeed dying every day in this «not existing» conflict. Their bodies were transported back to Russia in trucks as Груз 200 [Gruz 200] or Load 200. Load 200 is a term that every Russian knows, because it is the code that was also generally used in the past for the return of dead bodies from the battlefield. The bodies of the returned soldiers were secretly buried and the families were not allowed to communicate about them. Journalists who dared to report on Load 200 were threatened and beaten up.
A Load 200 convoy returning to Russia
On May 28, 2015, Vladimir Putin took the deception one step further by decreeing that the deaths or injuries of Russian soldiers in «special operations» can be considered military secrets, even in peacetime. This gave him a legal basis to arrest journalists and human rights activists who collect and publish information about the fallen soldiers.
On a personal level, the decree also made it difficult for relatives to gather facts about dead or wounded soldiers. Russia’s refusal to acknowledge that Russian soldiers were involved in the fighting also meant that the wounded were not entitled to disability benefits, and that relatives of the fallen could not receive compensation.
Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov (°1967), Putin’s press secretary, said the decree had nothing to do with Ukraine. According to him, it was just «a routine improvement of the legislation on state secrets».
Dmitri Sergeevich Peskov
According to British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, Russia has come up with a «solution» to the Charge 200 problem. The country would use mobile crematoria that can monitor troops during wartime and «vaporise» dead soldiers. The British Ministry of Defense released a video of the trucks that can burn bodies and announced on February 23, 2022 that the Kremlin could use them in the invasion of Ukraine to hide the number of casualties.
The Russian news media have repeatedly claimed that the war in Ukraine is not a war, but a limited military operation, in which only military targets are targeted. In the meantime, schools, hospitals and apartment buildings are being shelled. When the Russian army surrounded the city of Mariupol, preventing anyone from leaving, the Kremlin promised to allow «corridors» in the surrounded cities through which civilians could leave. Despite this promise, on March 6, 2022, civilians were still fired at with mortar fire. In Irpin, a mother with two children and a friend of the family were shot in front of a camera team working for The New York Times.
The victims in Irpin
On March 7, 2022, it looked like corridors would be created. There was a catch, though: the corridors would only allow for flights to Russia and Belarus. Residents of Kyiv could go to Domel in Belarus, residents of Sumy and Kharkiv could go to Belgorod in Russia, and residents of Mariupol could go to Rostov-on-Don, also in Russia. In this way, Putin wanted to be able to say in his communications intended for the Russian people that Ukrainians were fleeing their «Nazi regime» to seek safety in Russia and Belarus. Unfortunately for him, no one wanted to seek refuge in enemy territory.
On March 4, 2022, the State Duma passed a law that introduces penalties for «spreading fake news about the Russian Armed Forces and the military operation in Ukraine», «making statements that discredit the Armed Forces», and «calling for sanctions against Russia.” Those who use their position to «spread fake information or falsify evidence» face a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years. The law applies retroactively and also to foreigners. So, in theory, the undersigned could also be arrested.
Everything under control
In addition to controlling the distribution of news, the Kremlin has also been busy setting prohibitive rules for information provided by third parties. For example, the social network Facebook, the search engine Google and the messaging network Twitter are being targeted. According to Maksim Ksenzov, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, these sites should be considered «news providers" and must therefore register as such with the government. «These platforms are dangerous for the people», it is said, because «Russians can form a false worldview through such sources». The registration requirement applies to all blogs that receive more than 3,000 visitors per day. They must declare themselves to Roskomnadzor as a mass medium, with the same obligations as newspapers and TV stations, but they are not granted journalistic rights..
The lack of these rights allows Roskomnadzor to block the blogs of Garry Kimovich Kasparov (°1963), former world chess champion, and Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (1976-2024), a well-known dissident who often provides examples of corruption in Russia. He collects and publishes information about the many proven frauds carried out by members of Putin's United Russia party, but his blogs are more often than not not visible to the Russian public..
Not only blog writers are monitored. Readers are also increasingly being monitored. For example, since the summer of 2014 it has no longer been possible to use Wi-Fi anonymously in some public spaces. Anyone who wants to access the internet has to enter their identity data, which means that their internet use can be tracked.
In November 2017, the Russian State Duma adopted a number of amendments to the laws «On Information» and «On the Media», which allow Roskomnadzor to extrajudicially, upon simple request of the prosecutor’s office, restrict information provided by foreign non-governmental organisations that are considered «undesirable” or by foreign media outlets that are labeled «foreign agents» in Russia.
Two weeks later, on December 11, 2017, Roskomnadzor blocked several online resources at the request of the Prosecutor General, citing Article 15.3 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ.
The list of blocked websites included openrussia.org (Open Russia), openuni.io (Open University), or.team (Open Russia Team), pravo.openrussia.org (Open Russia Human Rights Project), imrussia.org (Institute for Modern Russia), khodorkovsky.ru (Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s personal website), and vmestoputina.ru (Vladimir Putin Alternatives). The websites are still accessible outside Russia.
This means that, for people living in the Russian Federation, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that «everyone has the right […] without interference and through any media and regardless of frontiers, to seek, receive and impart information and ideas», no longer applies.