the times | Thursday April 28 2022 11
News
came the first British staff journalist to
be expelled from Russia since the end of
the Cold War.
After the introduction of the new
media law last month, several British
and American publications have re-
located their Moscow correspondents
to neighbouring countries such as Lat-
via and Armenia.
The Kremlin has blocked or closed
the few remaining domestic independ-
ent publications, including the liberal
radio station Ekho Moskvy, the televi-
sion channel TV Rain, and the bilingual
news website Meduza. Novaya Gazeta,
the country’s oldest independent news-
paper, announced last month that it
would close all operations in Russia
until after the war.Maria Zakharova, the foreign minis-
try spokeswoman, said this month that
growing repression was a response to
the western media’s dissemination of
“false” information about the massacre
at Bucha. “Your newspapers, your col-
umnists, your television are complicit
in this punitive act,” she said.
Current levels of media repression
hark back to the Cold War, when for-
eign journalists were monitored con-
stantly by the KGB and often expelled
during periods of tension with the West.
Under Putin, the FSB has brought
back Soviet methods of harassment
against foreign journalists, including
apartment break-ins, surveillance and
interrogations. In 2011, Luke Harding, a
correspondent for the Guardian, be-Foreign journalists who “disrespect” the
Kremlin will be expelled from Russia
under planned legislation that heralds
the return of media repression not seen
since the height of the Cold War.
An amendment to Russia’s media law
will grant the prosecutor general’s
office powers to revoke the accredita-
tion of foreign publications, in effect
closing them down.
It is understood that the bill, which is
likely to become law next month, will
seek to target two British media outlets,
one of which is the BBC, one of the few
British organisations to have remained
in Russia.
In March, a media law that set a jail
term of up to 15 years for those who
spread “fake” information about
Russia’s armed forces came into force.
It gives the authorities the power to
shut down publications but only with a
court ruling. The draft bill removes that
requirement, giving prosecutors the
ability to revoke media licences with
immediate effect.
Journalists deemed to “disrespect the
state” and “discredit the armed forces”
are liable to fall foul of it, as are outlets
that publish “fakes” that pose a threat to
“the health of Russian citizens and
property”, or threaten “mass disruption
of public order”.
The first reading will take place in
Russia’s lower house of parliament next
month, according to Izvestia, a pro-
Kremlin newspaper. It will need to pass
three readings before being signed into
law by President Putin.
Among the bill’s authors is Andrei
Lugovoi, one of the two men accused of
murdering the defector Alexander Lit-
vinenko in London in 2006. The former
FSB officer is a member of parliament
and deputy chairman of the committee
on security and anti-corruption.
He said the bill was in response to
western countries’ closure of Russian
media outlets after the invasion of
Ukraine on February 24.
“Over the past month, we have seen
how many Russian media outlets oper-
ating in the West have been blocked
without any court decision,” Lugovoi,
55, said. “Moreover, these decisions are
often not even made by foreign author-
ities, but by telecom operators. This is
why we are preparing these amend-
ments with such urgency.”
Russian mouthpieces RT and Sput-
nik were banned throughout the Euro-
pean Union on March 2. “Systematic
information, manipulation and disin-
formation by the Kremlin is applied as
an operational tool in its assault on
Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Josep
Borrell said at the time.
Since the start of the war, the Krem-
lin has sought to crack down on foreign
media to control the narrative at home
and suppress information about mili-
tary failures and war crimes.Homophobic politician
hosts ‘guess the gay’ show
Julian O’Shaughnessy
A notoriously homophobic Russian
MP has become the presenter of a real-
ity show in which contestants have to
guess which one of them is gay.
Vitaly Milonov, who was the author
of Russia’s “anti-gay propaganda” law,
was featured in the first episode of the
online programme I’m Not Gay.
“Finding a gay in our country is like
finding a working McDonald’s,” said a
voiceover. “They definitely exist, but
there are very few of them and not
everyone knows about them.”
The show involves eight men living
together. At the end of each episode,
they vote to expel a contestant that they
suspect of being gay. If they guess cor-
rectly, they share 2 million roubles
(£21,000). If the gay man successfully
evades detection, he wins the prize.
The reactions of the contestants are
“tested” during the show by parades of
scantily clad models.
“I hope that you will quickly figure
out the gay,” Milonov, 48, told contest-
ants, making a throat-slitting gesture.
After the men falsely identified one of
their fellow participants, Milonov told
them: “You killed an innocent person.”
The show has been viewed almost
700,000 times on YouTube. “What’s
the point of this? Who are you going to
expose next? Muslims? Jews?” wrote
one social media user.
Although homosexuality is not ille-
gal in Russia, under a law written by Mi-
lonov that was approved by President
Putin in 2013, it is a crime to promote a
homosexual lifestyle to minors.
Human rights activists say the law legit-
imises everyday discrimination and
triggered a rise in hate attacks.
An ultra-conservative Russian Or-
thodox Christian, Milonov recently
travelled to the Donbas war zone in
eastern Ukraine.Vitaly Milonov authored Russia’s
“anti-gay propaganda” legislation
The US and Russia have swapped a
former marine jailed in Moscow for a
convicted Russian drug trafficker in a
deal that President Biden said had
“required difficult decisions”.
Trevor Reed, 30, was arrested in 2019
after allegedly assaulting a police
officer. He was jailed for nine years after
a conviction that was denounced by
Washington as unjust.
Russia released him after the US
agreed to return Konstantin Yaroshen-
ko, 53, a pilot arrested in Liberia in 2010Russia and US in prisoner exchange
who was serving a 20-year sentence in
Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle
cocaine into the US.
Russian media broadcast footage of
Reed at a Moscow airport and of Yaro-
shenko embracing his family in Sochi.
“I only just fully grasped now that I’m
home when I saw my wife and daugh-
ter,” Yaroshenko said.
Biden, who met Reed’s parents last
month, said: “I heard in the voices of
Trevor’s parents how much they’ve
worried about his health and missed his
presence. And I was delighted to be able
to share with them the good news.”David Charter WashingtonTrevor Reed’s family said his health
had been failing in a Russian prison.
Konstantin Yaroshenko, right, was
serving a 20-year term in ConnecticutW
orking as a
correspondent in
Cold War Moscow
was like being a lab
rat, under constant
observation, confined for the most
part in the cage of foreigner
compounds guarded by note-taking
cops. The apartments were bugged,
the phones too; drivers and cooks
hired through a KGB- affiliated
agency kept their eyes open and
their ears pinned back.
Driving outside the periphery of
Moscow required a permit, trips
around the country had to be
applied for months in advance. Our
car number plates bore the letter K,
for korrespondent, so even the most
numbskulled policeman could track
our movements. Honeytraps were
set up well in advance of our arrival.
Spontaneous friendships were
difficult, though not impossible. You
were either afraid on behalf of your
new acquaintance or fatalistic,
knowing that he or she would end
up being nobbled by the KGB.
Now Putin is piling on the
paranoia and if anything it’s worse
than the Cold War spymania. The
new media law allows only official
sources on the progress of the war. It
is easy to see where this leads: the
incrimination of Russians who gather
critical information about public
attitudes to the war, about the
returning bodies, about problems of
military morale. And correspondents
who question Putin’s abilities as a
commander will find themselvesvulnerable. This may be to strangle
potential stop-the-war movements as
the conflict drags on. It smacks of
something darker though, a shift to
the enforced militarisation of society
as a broader war becomes a more
realistic prospect.
The result will probably be more
expulsions of western reporters, who
have become very exposed, more so
than even in the Cold War days. In
the 1970s, action against journalists
was usually lumped together with
expulsion of diplomats as part of a
wider tit-for-tat game. Under Putin
there was initially a different
approach — to split potentially
favourable correspondents from
more critical reporters by, for
example, inviting the commentariat
to the Valdai conference for a
flattering encounter with the
Kremlin leader.
None of that serves Putin’s wartime
communication strategy. Western
correspondents are being seen as the
representatives of the enemy, just as
foreign reporters were in Nazi
Germany. Many western news
organisations are shifting to Yerevan
in Armenia and Istanbul. So are
critical Russian journalists. Staying
put has the merit of being on hand to
witness what might be the final years
of a flailing regime. But it runs the
reputational risk of legitimising
Putin and his increasingly aggressive
stance on information warfare.
Moscow is shrinking, just as it
shrank in the Cold War. Yet being
expelled from the place or being
forced into exile does not carry a
particular badge of honour. Rather,
for many, it will be a moment of
sadness about having to abandon a
country that has lost its way.Roger Boyes
CommentZoya Demchenko, her daughter Natalia, and their cats Basik and Kuzia
News
Kremlin says disrespectful
journalists will be expelled
Tom Ball
Back to Cold War era asPutin piles on the paranoia
RICHARD SPENCER FOR THE TIMES; NARCISO CONTRERAS/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES