Attack of the TV stringers

Russian human rights activists are hounded by reporters who won't identify themselves

Human rights monitors and a lawyer defending an allegedly tortured terrorist suspect are stalked by apparent NTV reporters.

In 2017, Federal Security Service officers in Penza arrested four anti-fascists (Yegor Zorin, Ilya Shakursky, Vasily Kuksov, Dmitry Pchelintsev, and Andrey Chernov) on charges of forming a terrorist group called “Set” (Network). The agents investigating the case say the suspects were planning to stage a coup and set off a series of explosions during Russia’s March 2018 presidential election and summer 2018 FIFA World Cup.

In January 2018, in connection with the same case, officials in St. Petersburg arrested another three anarchists (Igor Shishkin, Viktor Filinkov, and Yuliy Boyarshinov), and added two suspects to their wanted list. A St. Petersburg lawyer named Vitaly Cherkasov has agreed to defend Filinkov in court.

Later in January, the detainees got a visit from Yana Teplitskaya and Yekaterina Kosarevskaya — representatives from a local prisoners’ rights watchdog group. After the meeting, Teplitskaya and Kosarevskaya filed a report stating that Filinkov's and Shishkin's bodies showed signs of torture — specifically numerous burns from a stun gun.

On April 14, Kosarevskaya was exiting St. Petersburg’s Haass Medical Center with a colleague when a video cameraman and a woman holding an NTV microphone approached her. The woman identified herself simply as “Maria,” and refused to state her surname. She also wouldn’t produce any press credentials, or explain her editorial assignment. Instead, she followed Kosarevskaya and hounded her with questions like “What gives you the right to speak to Ukrainian consuls?” Kosarevskaya filmed the encounter on her mobile phone, and later uploaded the footage to Facebook.

“Maria” also asked Kosarevskaya why she was “covering up for terrorists” by claiming that the detainees had been tortured. “At first, I just didn't want to take the bait, and I decided to remain silent. But when she asked why I think they’re being tortured, I had to speak up and I explained to the journalist that you have to stand up to torture. And there’s no doubt that they’re being tortured," Kosarevskaya says.

She finally escaped by stepping into a taxi. “The journalist was so pushy that I had to shut the door right in her face. She almost got into the cab with me,” Kosarevskaya says. She had told no one about her visit to the Haass Medical Center that day.

On April 15, Yana Teplitskaya (Kosarevskaya’s colleague) was leaving the building where she’s registered residentially (though she actually lives elsewhere), when she encountered a cameraman and a young woman carrying an NTV microphone. They were loitering in the lobby, waiting for her. The reporter introduced herself as Alexandra Miroshnichenko, but refused to say what program she worked for. Teplitskaya told Meduza that the correspondent asked her all the same questions that “Maria” had put to Kosarevskaya. Instead of answering, Teplitskaya used her mobile phone to film the NTV crew, who followed her to a nearby bus stop. When the bus came, Teplitskaya boarded and left them behind.

“Aside from the journalist’s sheer nerve, what astonished me most, of course, was how the NTV people knew I would be at this apartment on that day. Maybe they're getting help from the people whose lawlessness we're trying to combat,” Teplitskaya told Meduza.

At 5 p.m. that evening, Vitaly Cherkasov (Viktor Filinkov’s lawyer) left his home for a jog and ran into the same “Maria” and her cameraman. They were waiting for him outside the lobby of his building. Cherkasov says the journalist didn’t even bother introducing herself and immediately “bombarded” him with questions and accused him of working with terrorists and the extremist Ukrainian organization “Right Sector.”

“Apparently their method is to scare you right from the outset and get in your face, so you have to say something. And, of course, whatever you say, it will look like you’re making excuses,” Cherkasov explains. He says he thinks agents from the Federal Security Service told NTV where to find him. “Judge for yourselves: When I came out of the entrance in running gear, the camera lens was pointed in my direction right from the first minute. The journalists couldn't have been standing like that the whole day. So somebody must have helped them and tipped them off,” Cherkasov says.

When the reporters refused to give their names or identify their TV program, Cherkasov started filming them with his phone. For about 10 minutes, the lawyer and the reporters circled each other in a public park, repeating themselves and ignoring each other’s questions. In the video, “Maria” accuses Cherkasov of working with terrorists and cooperating with Ukraine and the United States.

The same film crews hounded Yuri Dmitriev, a human rights activist with “Memorial.” NTV, however, denies that it employs the woman filmed by Kosarevskaya and Cherkasov.

On April 5, the Petrozavodsk City Court acquitted Yuri Dmitriev of child pornography charges. Before the verdict was announced, Dmitriev (who heads the Karelian branch of the human rights group Memorial) was accosted by two film crews carrying NTV equipment, according to a journalist present in the courtroom. Two women holding NTV microphones apparently ran up to Dmitriev when he walked into the room and started questioning him aggressively. “Their approach was pretty crude and unoriginal,” the eyewitness told Meduza. “They asked him about a hundred times, in a spiteful voice: ‘Do you think it's normal to take pictures of naked children?’”

The women apparently refused to identify themselves to Dmitriev and others. While the verdict was being read in closed court, the women allegedly confronted Dmitriev’s friends with the same questions.

Ekho Moskvy’s St. Petersburg branch posted several videos from Petrozavodsk showing the young women who hounded Dmitriev. The women in these images bear a striking resemblance to the two reporters who — 10 days later — would stalk and harass Kosarevskaya, Teplitskaya, and Cherkasov.

Late on April 15, the photographer David Frenkel tweeted a picture of “Maria,” saying that her surname is Barzunova. Meduza has been unable to track down a journalist with this name.

Tatyana Mitkova, the chief editor of NTV’s news desk, told Meduza that she’s not aware of any reporter on her staff named Maria Barzunova. NTV’s St. Petersburg newsroom told Meduza that it doesn’t currently employ anyone whose last name starts with the letter “B.”

There are, however, a few news reports on NTV’s website that credit a freelance stringer named Maria Barzunova (for example, this one and this one). All these segments are from 2016.

“It's entirely possible that these were not our staffers but impostors. You know, it's a common problem for national TV networks — outsiders present themselves as our personnel,” NTV's St. Petersburg bureau told Meduza.

Story by Irina Kravtsova, translation by Peter Marshall