May 30, 2023
Dear friends,
As promised, we are writing about the news of the Russian Independent Media Archive, which, as often happens, highlights the history of the country.
Novy Focus was launched in 2005, but unfortunately, not all of its materials have been archived. Best way to describe the work of Novy Focus is to follow its conflicts with Russian authorities. That first major conflict arose in 2009 when Mikhail Afanasiev, the editor-in-chief of the outlet, and his colleagues covered the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. They wrote that in the flooded building there were still living people. Relatives demanded that the hydroelectric power station be closed so that the water would leave the engine room — perhaps this way people could be saved. The authorities ignored these appeals, and Mikhail Afanasyev was charged with libel. This article has not been preserved in the outlet’s archive, but it is still available on Afanasiev's blog. The full story can be read in a 2009 BBC material.
After the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, another article by Mikhail Afanasiev was published in Novy Focus. By this time, Afanasiev was already a two-time winner of the Andrei Sakharov Prize "For journalism as a civil act." Afanasiev wrote about eleven soldiers of the Special Purpose Mobile Unit of the National Guard from Khakassia who refused to continue fighting with Ukraine.
The soldiers told how they were first thrown into Belarus without explanation, how they stuck around in the field camp without food and not being able to get answers from the drunken commander. And then, on February 24, they were among those who were sent "to take Kyiv in three days." They went, as if to a parade, without reconnaissance and cover, while on broken-down equipment, which immediately began to break down. And in front of these fighters, almost their entire column was shot down by heavy weapons from the air. Then it occurred to them that in Kyiv they would not be welcomed with open arms and that the so-called special operation was a criminal war. They told some general of the National Guard everything they thought, and after that they were sent back to Khakassia in hope that they would be quickly fired and the whole story hushed up.
Measures followed immediately. In April 2022, the Novy Focus website was blocked, the editorial office was fined, and Mikhail Afanasiev was arrested: he was accused of spreading “fake news” about the army using his official position. He faces 5 to 10 years in prison. Now the remaining independent media are writing about Afanasyev's criminal case.
We cannot save Mikhail Afanasiev, like other political prisoners, but at least we try to keep their work preserved. We now have the Novy Focus archive, including the article that cost its author his freedom.
Grani.ru is an influential outlet that has existed since 2000 and has experienced a rich history of blocking, suppression, as well as attempts to bypass blocking and continue to work no matter what. Grani.ru is the most important news and political media that has consistently covered the human rights agenda for many years, writing about political prisoners, protests and human rights violations, Grani was a platform for everyone who was not loyal to the Russian authorities.
The first time Grani began to be blocked was in March 2014 — this was due to the occupation of Crimea by Russia. Six years later, the ECtHR recognized that this blocking was contrary to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The decisions of the ECtHR, however, did not impress the Russian authorities a lot.
Grani.ru survived as long as they could. Now their entire archive is available with us. Read the article by Alexander Skobov, published on March 30, 2014 — the author wonders if Hitler could have stopped by occupying the Sudetenland, and whether Putin would have stopped by occupying Crimea.
Here is what Skobov writes:
“Without a constant demonstration of new and new successes and victories, the artificially inflated rating will be blown away very quickly. <...> This is the main factor pushing the Kremlin towards a full-scale invasion. There are others. This is both a gut desire to crush the Ukrainian revolution, and an unbearable temptation to take advantage of the weakening of Ukrainian statehood, inevitable in any revolution.”
And here is the whole article