President Vladimir Putin has sought for more than two decades to control — or shut down — reporters and editors in the country.
Meduza, felt forced to leave in March because of severe wartime censorship laws. He crossed into Europe in the middle of the night, “with my panic-packed bags on my back and my dog in tow.”
sought refuge in Latvia, along with 53 of the paper’s staff, intent on starting a new European version despite having no money to finance it.Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Russian media began long before his Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine and the threat of lengthy prison terms for any journalists who call the fighting anything but a “special military operation.”
“Putin is a control fanatic, and he believed he should control the media. We can see that now,” said Alexei Venediktov, who was editor in chief of the radio station Echo of Moscow when it was shut down in March. He escaped to Latvia.Putin won his first term as president in March 2000.
Not long after, he complained to Venediktov about his radio coverage. The journalist says he had gotten similar complaints from the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, but they merely vented while still letting journalists work freely.
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