Mikhail Afanasyev wants your letters.
The Russian journalist from Abakan in Siberia was jailed last year for writing about a small group of national guardsmen who had refused to fight in Ukraine. But Afanasyev remains defiant, while local supporters crowdfund thousands of dollars to pay off his legal fines.
“It is the duty of every person to expand the horizon of freedom by his actions, so that light pours in and overcomes the darkness,” Afanasyev wrote from pre-trial detention in a letter to his supporters this month.
“I really ask you to write to me, very much! It helps me a lot … I just want to be a journalist, faithful to my profession to the end and defend its values.”
Independent Russian journalism could have buckled and collapsed over the past year, under the weight of new laws criminalising “fake news” and references to war that seem to outlaw most honest reporting.
In early March, legacy media such as Echo of Moscow were being shut down and even many international media groups had to suspend publishing from Moscow rather than risk their reporters being jailed.
But Afanasyev and hundreds of independent journalists have remained in Russia, continuing to report the news and providing a surprising level of insight into the missteps of the Russian army, the effects of Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war and Vladimir Putin’s ever-expanding grip on power.
Criminal cases are common, with another journalist, Maria Ponomarenko, sentenced to six years in prison this week for a post about the bombing of the Mariupol drama theatre. “No totalitarian regime seems as strong as it does before the collapse,” she said in her final speech in court.
A constellation of outlets on the ground, many of them opened after the war began, continue to provide insight into the darkest corners of Russia. One, called the New Tab, managed to sneak into a Russian military town this week, where six mobilised soldiers have died in an epidemic of alcoholism.
And when a missile struck a technical college being used by Russian soldiers in east Ukraine on New Year’s Day, Russian media quickly managed to establish that the death toll was higher than officially admitted, despite pressure on relatives to stay quiet.
“The families are scared. They have the most to lose [by speaking out],” said one local journalist who had covered funerals following the strike. “It is the hardest story I have ever covered.”
Others have chosen the safer option of exile. More than a thousand journalists left Russia during the first weeks of war, part of a huge exodus of hundreds of thousands of Russians who have fled the country over the past year.
Among them were journalists from TV Rain, the last independent Russian TV station, whose website and offices were raided in the early days of the invasion.
TV Rain first settled in Latvia, but its journalists were forced to relocate again after one of their correspondents made an unscripted call to provide unspecified aid to Russian soldiers.
The incident, which prompted Latvia to suspend TV Rain’s broadcasting licence, provides a vivid illustration of distrust of the Russian opposition and opponents of the war in exile.
The Netherlands has since granted the channel a five-year broadcasting permit, and its journalists are now working from a studio perched on an Amsterdam canal.
“It is the fourth time I have moved since the start of the war. Every time I have to start over,” said one of TV Rain’s presenters as she boarded a train back to the Dutch capital from a concert by Monetochka (Elizaveta Gyrdymova).
“But I can’t complain too much. We have to keep doing our work. At least I have somewhere to live and my house isn’t getting bombed.”
They are not the only Russians sheltering in the Dutch capital. Earlier this month, a few hundred young Russians gathered at a small concert hall in Haarlem, a city outside Amsterdam, to see the singer-songwriter Monetochka.
Monetochka, 24, caused a sensation in 2016 with a string of songs filled with witty, ironic rhymes about a teenager’s life in today’s Russia.
She has since emerged as one of the most recognisable faces of Generation P, a cohort of Russians who have only lived under one leader, Putin.
“I know that many here today like me miss our home,” Monetochka told a crowd at the start of the gig.
Like most present in the concert hall, Monetochka emigrated soon after the war started.
Her lyrics on teenage angst are now mixed with defiant anti-war messages. In Haarlem, she led the crowd in a loud “No to war, no to war!” chant midway through one of her hit songs.
Monetochka’s new artistic direction has been duly noted in Moscow.
Last month, Russia’s ministry of justice branded the singer a “foreign agent”, a label with distinct, Soviet-era “enemy of the people” connotations.
Monetochka is one of a growing group of popular Russian artists who have been forced to leave the country for their views.
Their exodus has been compared to the intellectual emigration after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution when hundreds of writers, poets, and painters sailed out of Russia abroad what became known as “philosophers’ ships”.
As the concert in Haarlem came to an end, a small group congregated outside.
“I feel less alone after going to concerts like these,” said Pavel, a 25-year-old who left Moscow a year ago. “It is important that we gather together and show our opposition to the war, even if it doesn’t change anything in Russia.”
