Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, who survived a poisoning and assassination attempt by a Chechen commando, remains an open dissident of Russia despite the threats she faces. A struggle that she recounts in her first book, “I Love Russia,” written during her exile abroad.
Elena Kostyuchenko has been a journalist for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta for 17 years and has reported from Ukraine on the atrocities committed by Russian forces since the February 2022 invasion of the region for exile abroad.
France 24 spoke to the Russian journalist at the United Nations headquarters in New York while she attended an event on October 24 about the regional impact of the human rights situation in Russia.
That same week, Mariana Katzarova, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Russian Federation, presented her first report to the Third Committee of the 78th session of the General Assembly. Its report warns of “a model of repression of civil and political rights” in Russia, mentioning in particular arbitrary mass arrests and the “persistent use of torture and ill-treatment.”
The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
You can read and watch the original interview in English here. “People defend themselves”: Russian journalist Elena Kostyutschenko on Ukraine, Putin and the poisoning
France 24: You worked for Novaya Gazeta in Ukraine and had to flee after discovering you were on the Kremlin’s list of people to kill. What happened ?
Elena Kostyuchenko : I arrived in Ukraine on the first day of the war (February 24, 2022, editor’s note). I reported from several cities, including Odessa, Mykolaiv and Kherson, which were occupied at the time, and then had to go to Mariupol. At that time the city was still resisting and there was only one motorable road that ran through Zaporizhzhia. I was preparing to take this route into the city, but the day before I received a call from a Novaya Gazeta colleague who told me that, according to her sources, it was the pro-Kremlin Chechen leader [Ramzan] Kadyrov had given the order to find me and kill me.
This information was later confirmed by a source in Ukrainian military intelligence, who told me that the people present at the Russian checkpoints were in possession of my photo and my name. My editor-in-chief, [Dmitri] Muratov called me and asked me to leave Ukraine as soon as possible. The next day I tried to find another way to Mariupol, but I couldn’t. So I left Ukraine.
You managed to save your life the first time, but during your exile you were targeted again. How did you find out you were poisoned? ?
That’s what my doctors think. A police investigation is underway, but I don’t know the outcome yet.
After my newspaper Novaya Gazeta was closed by Russia, I joined Meduza, another independent media company, but they were about to send me back to Ukraine. I needed a visa so I went to Munich to apply for one and on the way back I felt bad.
The first thing I noticed was that I was sweating profusely and the sweat had a strange smell. A smell of rotten fruit. Then I had a headache and was disoriented. I couldn’t figure out how to get home from the train station.
The next day, more symptoms occurred: severe stomach pain, dizziness, nausea, and I vomited. I thought it was Covid-19. Then the doctors – their first hypothesis was of course not poisoning – ruled out many diagnoses, but after two and a half months of testing they came to the conclusion that poisoning was the most likely explanation.
According to their findings, my liver enzymes were five to seven times higher than normal. They also found blood in my urine. I still have to deal with the aftermath today.
What made you a target with your report? ?
I have no idea. In fact, I hope one day I can ask this question to the people who tried to poison me. It is stupid to want to kill journalists who only describe reality. And if reality is terrible, then it is not our fault, but that of the people who make reality so terrible. We know who made Russian reality terrible: Vladimir Putin. We journalists only describe what is happening, and we have a duty to keep our fellow citizens in touch with reality. That’s all we do.
When someone was killed in Novaya Gazeta, another journalist took his place. When Anna Politkovskaya – who reported on Chechnya – was killed, Natalia Estemirova continued her work. Then Natalia Estemirova was killed and Elena Milashina took over. That is the only answer we can give to this violence: keep our fellow citizens informed, continue our professional lives.
We will not stop. That’s why killing journalists is pointless. And that’s why I’m looking forward to being able to ask those responsible about their motives.
Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in 2006, was an inspiration to you. What was your relationship with her? ?
It is thanks to her that I became a journalist. I came from a poor family and started working at a young age, mainly as a floor cleaner. I started working as a journalist while I was at school. I needed to earn money to buy new shoes, but I didn’t take the job seriously. At the time, I was working for a local newspaper in my hometown.
One day I was shopping Novaya Gazeta and came across an article by Anna Politkovskaya. She spoke of ethnic cleansing in a Chechen village, in which 36 people were massacred by Russian soldiers. One of them had been crucified.
The same article told the story of a nine-year-old Chechen boy. He forbade his mother from listening to Russian songs on the radio because Russian soldiers kidnapped his father and brought him home after killing him and cutting off his nose. I can’t describe how I felt reading it. It’s like my whole world has collapsed.
I thought I knew things about my country. I thought I knew what was happening in Chechnya, for example. I knew that Russian soldiers were fighting terrorists and protecting civilians. What is the word “cleaning”? I went to the library and asked about all the Novaya Gazeta articles.
I started reading Anna Politkovskaya’s articles, then others. I was 14 years old and angry at Novaya Gazeta because they had completely ruined my world. It’s difficult to no longer have a common truth with the people around you. That’s when I decided to work there. And that’s what I did.
I came to Novaïa as an intern at the age of 17. Anna Politkovskaya was the first person I saw when I entered the building. She was very beautiful and her office was right next to mine. She was still working. She never chatted, she didn’t drink tea with the others. She worked, she wrote. In April 2006 they gave me a place among their journalists, and in October 2006 Anna Politkovskaya was murdered.
This is the first murder of one of my colleagues that I have witnessed and it is the most serious. I regret every day that I didn’t approach her and thank her for everything she did for me. Even if she didn’t know it, she gave me a career, she gave me the truth. Somehow I thought I had time. I thought I would be a good journalist and walk up to him and tell him. But you never know how much time you have. Now I try to thank people straight away.
You worked for Novaya Gazeta for many years and have just published your first book, which is both a memoir and a compilation of several of these stories. You have a painful relationship with Russia, don’t you? ?
It’s a book about the love I have for Russia. A book about that love and how it has changed over the course of my life and how it has changed me. Not always in the best sense.
It is also a book that tells the story of how Russia fell into fascism and how I didn’t notice it, blinded by the love I have for my country. This love has given me the strength to write about things I see, discover things people try to hide, and talk to people I wouldn’t normally talk to. That love also gave me hope, and that hope blinded me in many ways. This is not just my personal story. It is also the personal story of many people.
These are reports from Novaya Gazeta, where I have written for 17 years. There we find the story of children living in an amputee hospital, the story of a homosexual couple in a village in southern Russia and the story of a woman who searched for the body of her murdered husband. in Donbass… I also tell the story of an indigenous people in the far north of Russia who are disappearing – there are only 700 left. There are so many voices. For me it is important to make them heard because I think it is just as important to understand these people, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, their expectations and the ways in which these expectations are not met, like Putin to understand.
They said that Vladimir Putin was a symptom, but that he was not Russia’s real problem ?
There is fascism in Russia, and Putin’s role is enormous. The seeds have germinated deeply and eliminating Putin now is not the solution. It would solve a lot of things, it would end the war in Ukraine, sure, but would it heal us as a society? NO. I think it will take us a lot of time and effort to understand how we became what we became.
In my opinion, the origin of this situation lies in the [dissolution de] the Soviet Union, which was a liberation for so many nations, but also a tragedy for so many people – especially in the 1990s, which was a time of poverty, crime and enormous violence. Putin seizes on this resentment, this trauma, and explains it by saying: “This is what we have lost, but Russia can become great again. We can restore our greatness and make Russia not just a country, but a great country.” And unfortunately he implemented this in our country and our culture made fascism possible.
There are so many other factors and I hope I have addressed some of them. But it is what got us to where we are today. In order to defeat fascism, great joint work is required. It won’t happen like that.
Why do you think more Russians aren’t speaking out against the war in Ukraine and this descent into totalitarianism? ?
It is not easy to speak out against war. Currently we have two articles in the Criminal and Administrative Code [qui définissent le partage] controversial information as a criminal offense punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Many people are now in prison because they passed on information about Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol. Another article prohibits “discrediting the Russian army” – for this it is not even necessary to share information, it is enough to express a negative feeling like “Oh my God, I am so sad, I hate this war.”
They also banned words like “war”, “occupation”, “annexation” – sometimes it can also be “murder”, “rape”, “fascism”.
But people continue to fight back, and they will continue to do so. Around 25,000 Russians have been arrested since the invasion began while actively protesting the war. I know of many anti-war initiatives, such as the feminist anti-war movement and other initiatives, but their work is not so public for obvious reasons, because prison sentences in Russia are huge at the moment. Moment.
Opinion polls used by Russian propaganda do not show this [la réalité] Because if someone comes up to you on the street and asks you, “What do you think about the war,” what can you say if you can be punished for saying “I am against the war?”
However, there are other sophisticated sociological methods as well [pour évaluer l’opinion]. They show that about 15% of people actively support the war, 15% actively oppose it, and in the middle the majority of Russians, about 70%, generally tolerate the war. We don’t know how to get out of this. We don’t know how to resist. They suffer from all the consequences of this war. We don’t want to be in this situation. But they feel they can’t do anything because powerlessness is our national trauma.
Can you tell us about the role television played? ? And how things became personal in your relationship with your mother ?
The role of television – and not just television but state propaganda – is enormous. That’s what makes this war possible. Our propaganda is sophisticated. She is talented and extremely well funded. Propaganda funding currently amounts to approximately $1.4 billion. It’s enormous. And it’s not just television. They conduct an “organizational dialogue” whose sole purpose is to produce falsehoods [informations] about this war and spread it on social media.
However, there are troll factories there [Evguéni] Prigozhin (the late Wagner boss who founded the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll factory) is no more. However, the fact is that there is propaganda in schools. In Russian schools, children are forced to attend classes where they are taught that this “special military operation” – because we are not allowed to use the term “war” – is necessary and that Ukraine is not a real country. I think the people who do this and mutilate the soul of the Russian people should be held accountable.
My mother watches television, like everyone else of her generation, and it poisons her. She has a completely different picture of what is happening.
I went to Ukraine. When I was there reporting, she called me and explained what I was seeing because she had seen it on TV.
I keep talking to her and she keeps talking to me because we love each other. And it’s difficult because sometimes she says, “I can’t talk about it” and we don’t talk about it for a day or two… And it’s very difficult to listen to each other, to really listen. Sometimes I say to myself: “Mom, I don’t want to talk on TV. I would like to talk to you. Don’t repeat these things. It is very difficult, but we will do it because we love everyone.” others .I definitely don’t want to give my mother to Putin, he won’t be able to take her from me.
She recently said she no longer understands the purpose of this war. She says that this war is meaningless, but that Russia must win, because we started it and there is only one way out: to win. I think exactly the opposite: the only way for Russia to have a future is to lose the war, because if we win it – God forbid – how many people will be killed in the meantime?
The United Nations has just published its first report on the human rights situation in Russia. Does this report support your own conclusions? ?
Quite. And what I really like about this report is that it shows that the deterioration of human rights has a long history and that it has not happened [avec l’invasion de l’Ukraine] on February 24, 2022. It started a long time ago, the repression was already intensifying and human rights violations were slowly increasing. But it seems like the world ignored this for a long time because everyone wanted normal trade relations with Russia – and when I say with Russia, I mean with Putin. And here we are.
I really appreciate Mariana Katzarova’s work [en tant que rapporteuse spéciale des Nations unies sur les droits de l’homme dans la Fédération de Russie]. Although the Russian state refused to recognize her mandate and allow her into the country, she did an excellent job. I am very pleased that the special mandate has been renewed and that the next special report will follow. It is extremely important that people living outside Russia know what is happening in the country because it is not just a human rights issue. This is a global security issue.
Are you still afraid for your life? ?
I can’t say I’m afraid for my life. I think about the risks… We always know that there are such risks and we just learn to live with them.
What will you do now ? You cannot return to Russia.
No, I can’t. And it’s very difficult for me because I really want to be in my country, be with my people. Things got worse there… I want to be there and fix things as best I can.
Can Russians read your book? ?
Yes, we had to invent a whole system for this. When I was writing the book, I contacted a few publishers and they told me that they had read it and that they really liked it. [mais] that publication was out of the question because it violated three articles of the penal code and that publication meant taking the risk of going to prison.
Meduza, where I currently work, founded its own publishing house and was inspired by the Soviet model of disseminating banned information: samizdat (secret dissemination of state-banned information) and tamizdat (smuggled literature for publication abroad).
This is Tamizdat in that the book is published abroad and for Russians in Russian [qui] can smuggle him into Russia.
But we [utilisons également le modèle du] Samizdat: The book is distributed electronically for free through the Meduza application, which offers five ways to avoid censorship by the Russian state. Meduza agreed that she wouldn’t mind if people in Russia printed it and made a book out of it. Samizdat were hand-made books. It is very strange that we have to use such an old Soviet practice.
This book is interesting not only for Russians, but also for people who are curious about what daily life was like under fascism, because currently the world is taking an authoritarian turn and many countries and many cultures are in danger.
What I have learned in the last few years is that no one is safe from fascism.
And if I could send a message to the past, it would be to remain worried, to be hysterical if necessary, and to fight for your country because you can lose it. And I want my readers to be very concerned.