LONDON—While Russia’s war continues to devastate Ukraine, a different kind of tragedy is unfolding in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin’s cronies have banded together in support of a dangerous new law that has already prompted scores of Russian journalists to flee the country.
The law, which was approved Friday, will allow authorities to target anyone accused of spreading—or having already spread—so-called “fake news” about the invasion of Ukraine. In reality, the new rules could represent the final nail in the coffin of what little free press is left in the country, where any journalist who dares go against the official Kremlin war narrative could now face up to 15 years in prison.
One of the leading voices behind the bill, which was proposed and hastily passed in Moscow’s State Duma earlier this week, is Russian parliament member Oleg Matveychev, known as the Kremlin’s notorious spin doctor.
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On the eve of the bill’s adoption, Matveychev was preparing for what he described as “a new page” in Russia’s history.
“Tomorrow we are going to discuss at the parliament which commission will look into the coverage of the war by foreign press and see who does objective reporting and who does not,” the statesman told The Daily Beast in a phone interview on Thursday. “Previously we did not restrict foreign press but that was before bank accounts of our journalists were arrested abroad, before our Sputnik news agency was banned and censored.”
Matveychev’s labeling of independent Russian media as “foreign press” is part of the Kremlin’s strategy of cracking down on reporters by designating outlets that produce free journalism as “foreign agents,” all in an effort to demonize and alienate them from the Russian people. Targets of the “foreign agent” campaign include the Russian radio network Echo and the independent TV Rain, both of which have recently been shut down by the Kremlin.
These broadcasters have been the backbone of independent media in Russia for years, ensuring that Kremlin propaganda is not the only information pumped out on the airwaves.
The invasion of Ukraine has offered the Kremlin an excuse to permanently silence dissenting voices. For someone like Matveychev this has been the dream for more than a decade. In 2010, he said he wanted to gather all critics and the media in a square, “And when you are all out, a tank army would come out and wrap all the bastards, all the shit of the nation around the tanks’ tracks, burn you out.”
For now, he will settle for extinguishing media freedom and closing down the loudest opposition voices.
“Both Echo and Rain were not just opposition media, they were agents financed from abroad,” Matveychev told The Daily Beast. “The majority of Russians support our decisions and told us we should have shut them down earlier. Our boys are dying on the frontlines and they criticize our operation.”
“We’ll do like Churchill, who also restricted information during World War II,” the politician added. “That is normal.”
The new development has reporters across Russia considering whether to flee the country, especially as all flights to the European Union and the United States have been canceled as a result of Western sanctions. Russian journalists have since begun to fly to Turkey, Egypt, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dubai, and even Mongolia to escape the Kremlin’s wrath.
Editor-in-chief of Rain TV, Tikhon Dziadko, escaped to Turkey on Tuesday with his family after receiving a series of threats. “Some thugs introducing themselves as the ‘men’s state’ wrote to me [saying]: ‘I will come to your house,” Dziadko told The Daily Beast in a phone interview from Turkey. “We packed a few suitcases and took off with a plan to regroup and see what happens in the country next.”
The media is being throttled but the Kremlin is struggling to stifle news from Ukraine. Millions of Russians have friends or relatives in the neighboring country and they are sending back videos of missiles fired at their cities, of destroyed apartment blocks, burning villages and thousands of people sleeping in metro stations.
The messages describe near death escapes and families fleeing to the West of the country.
If President Putin is “liberating” Ukraine why are an estimated 1 million people running in the opposite direction towards the border of NATO and the European Union.
Even Russia’s elite have stopped posting glamorous selfies and instead share videos of war or offer to help their devastated friends.
Of course, all of this is being faked according to Kremlin insiders. “Ukraine was staging and filming the fake videos to misinform Russians for six months,” Matveychev claimed.
Very soon, it looks as though there will be no independent Russian media left to call out any falsehoods.
