"Are you not afraid that she will throw something out of you-like Ovsyannikova?"

Many regional journalists (even in the pro -government media) do not support the war. But they cannot or do not want to leave Russia. This is how they survive

After February 24, many journalists leave Russian state and proceedings ( for example , from the TASS agency and from the RT channel). Units of them are accompanied by shares and public statements - as the former employee of the first channel Marina Ovsyannikova and the Ramy.ru editors Yegor Polyakov and Alexander Miroshnikov did. There is very little information about what is happening with the regional media market, which the state controls even more actively. At the same time, it is obvious that for anti -war statements outside Moscow are punished tougher, despite the fact that attention to these cases is much less. Together with the New tab, Medusa found correspondents and editors of regional publications who condemn the Russian invasion - but continue to work (or worked until recently) in the media related to the state.

"And you want not to think about the war - it will not work"

On February 24, journalist Marina was on a business trip in the Rostov region, she had no time to read news. When she found out what happened, she first believed in statements by the Russian authorities.

“At first they said that only military facilities would bomb. The first day I still kept this noodles on my ears. The next day I go to Facebook and see photos of the Kharkov metro, which is packed by people: blankets, some mattresses, children, food, ”Marina says that he remembers the first days of the war in detail.

She works in a large regional newspaper on agriculture in the city in the south of Russia. The main income of the publication, according to her, is an advertisement for fertilizers and seeds produced by large agricultural enterprises, private ads, for example, the sale of an excess of seedlings or tractors. Subscription brings a little money.

News about the beginning of the war shocked Marina: her grandmother was from Zaporozhye, she herself studied at the University in Crimea, went to visit her friend in the village in the Kherson region for the weekend. She “loved Ukraine for the melting language”, ATB stores and delicious products.

At first, Marina (the name was changed at the request of the heroine) did not follow what and to whom she said in the editorial office of her newspaper . She openly opposed the hostilities in Ukraine and threw shots to the school chat with a school bombing in Kharkov - a girlfriend who studied at this school sent her video.

On February 24, the journalist wrote “No War” on her Facebook page, after which one colleague - according to Marina, “quite sane person” - asked in personal messages: “Why are you eating the Bandera’s ass?” And blocked her. Others began to call Marina “almost a traitor”, someone shook: “Beach better, you don’t want us to be closed?”

Marina forgot about books and films, stopped getting enough sleep and worked with difficulty. She had to turn off the notifications in the telegram channels-"otherwise it would be impossible to keep a clear mind."

“I still cannot understand what world I am in. In the morning I do not want to wake up, although I used to do exercises and bathed in a spring, ”says Marina. -It is very difficult to communicate at work when a farmer sends a video where the army of Ukraine is ridiculed. What should I answer this? "

A week after the start of the war, the newspaper came an invitation from the community of independent Russian media Syndicate-100 to sign a letter from independent media that opposed the war, but most of the employees refused. “They said, roughly speaking, we do not need problems, we want to work and release the newspaper. People have loans, children, a mortgage. This is great: you will threaten for 15 years [under an article on fakes about the Russian army], and with whom will your children be? " - explains the woman.

Although they decided not to sign a statement at the editorial office, a column of Marina came out on the last lane of the newspaper, where she talked about her friendship with a girl Lida from Ukraine. They made friends in 2010 in Yalta, and Lida immediately refused to speak with a friend in Russian - Marina was forced to switch to Ukrainian:

My grandmother nursed me. We can say that Ukrainian is my very first language, I speak it in the very least. I described all this in the column as an example of the fact that Ukrainians do not want to feel “younger brothers” and that I am worried about Lida. Now we would not have written about it anymore: if in the first week some of the media spoke out against [war], now it is impossible.

In addition to this column, not a single notes about the war were published in the newspaper - “as if it does not exist at all,” despite the fact that the city is a hundred kilometers from the border from the DPR, and a military airfield is located nearby. “Something is constantly flying above your head: and you want not to think about the war-it will not work,” says Marina. She even began to dream of "these crazy planes."

She believes that “nothing to write” is also a position for the newspaper, because “if you look at the districts [district newspapers], then the hair will stand on end: they complement their logos with the letter Z and write about patriotic automotive races.” “And we buried in agriculture and some everyday stories. The villagers are not up to politics: they need to plant bread and grow cattle. Although before we wrote on socio-political topics, ”says Marina.

After the arrival of many refugees from Donbass is sent to Russia to the Rostov region, and from there by train to other regions. “Our farmers are strained so that they collect a humanitarian ( humanitarian aid-approx. Medusa )-cardboard boxes with clothes and food, because all these people need to be fed with something!” - Marina is outraged that in their newspaper not a word is said about this.

According to Marina, besides her and several more people, almost everyone in the editorial office support the Presidential decisions. For some, relatives are fighting on the side of the DPR, others live there, so they established the rule in the editorial office: do not speak on this topic, "so that there is no squabble." People are either for the war, or they say that "it does not concern them." Marina began to understand them over time, she says that "when you look at all these horrors, you just do not sleep."

I am a quarter of the Ukrainian, my great -grandfather has passed by the WWII, and now my country is dropping bombs on Kharkov and Mariupol. Only because it seemed to Putin that someone could put cruise missiles in Ukraine. They have not yet been set, and Mariupol is gone.

Marina has been to Mariupol more than once. Previously, when the ground boundaries with Ukraine were open, it could be reached from her hometown in two hours by train.

Someone plowed all his life to build a house. And suddenly everything turns into dust: apartments, family albums ... And people run somewhere with their backpacks. My mother, who is half Ukrainian, also, by the way, on the side of Putin. I don’t talk to her at all. My best girlfriend told me: "Marina, we don’t throw my own." I throw her a video with destruction in Mariupol, and she says: "So, this is a war."

But Marina nevertheless found in the city a man who shares her opinion about the war. This man was her hairdresser.

I call her: "Galya, I need to get a cut." She replies that she has time only for Easter [April 17]. And I am to her: “Galya, what are you? This is a big sin - cut off on Easter! " “Marina,” he says, “but I'm working. And in general, now the war is going on, and you are afraid to get a cut on Easter. ” In general, I went to her, and we talked about an hour. And on the eve of the bomb, she hit the Odessa house, where a girl with a three -month -old child died . And here is my hairdresser - she cried.

In early March, the owner of the newspaper announced to employees that he plans to release it only until the middle of summer. The official reason for the closure is the increase in paper prices , but Marina thinks that the matter may be in censorship - after her column about the Ukrainian girlfriend. The journalist plans to finalize in the newspaper until July, and then hopes to get to another place.

“But this situation [with the war] drives people like me into severe depression, because it is not clear how to work further, how to agree with myself and not go crazy. You become so spy: you just look and you can’t do anything, ”Marina believes.

She even thought to leave Russia, because for her teenage daughter, whom the woman is raising alone, "there is no future here." But Marina does not imagine how to do it. “Where will I go, who will accept me? She argues. “I can't twitch anywhere.” One hope that this war will end soon. ”

"Spurred by censorship"

Vasily Masalsky from Kaliningrad “did not force himself” and a week after the start of the war he wrote a letter of resignation. For the past six years, he worked as an editor on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio - illuminated local politics and economics.

I worked from the date of the opening of the radio station until March 1, 2022 ( the last air of Masalsky was released on March 4, since he was finalizing a week - approx. Medusa ). Since we have a small region and a town, we must understand that the editor is a presenter and a correspondent. Sounds loudly - “editor”, but in fact it is a shutté, reaper and a player on the dud.

Thoughts about departure began to come to Masalsky last year - since there was more and more propaganda on the federal air. As an example, Vasily cites the Mordan program, in which, according to him, “under the sauce of the author’s point of view [host, journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Sergei Mardan] was supplied pure propaganda - including about Ukraine.” “And even though you personally have no direct relation to this, I wanted to associate yourself with this radio station,” he says.

“In the early days of hostilities, we did not understand what local news we could talk about. And when the first shock passed, a meeting with the editors of the holding took place, at which we were made to understand that if we are breaking, if we do not know how to work, then we don’t need to, ”Masalsky recalls.

After the meeting with the leadership, Vasily wrote a statement of care. It was decided that even a two -week “practicing” was not needed: he handed things and “just went nowhere.” In addition to Masalsky, several more people quit the holding: “There were no special persuasion [to remain], everyone reacted with understanding to this decision.” Those who found compromises remained, because "there is nowhere else to go." Medusa sent a request on the Komsomolskaya Pravda radio in Kaliningrad to find out if the meeting was held with the leadership that Masalsky was talking about, and how many people quit after the start of the war, but did not receive an answer.

To the former editor of the international change in the cities of the Channel One Marina Ovsyannikova and the editors of Lenta.ru, who openly condemned the war and resigned, he refers to "deeply positively", although he does not consider "such a partisan of effective." Vasily himself does not make loud statements-because he does not believe that this can change something.

Now Masalsky helps his wife with her candy business and studies for a masseur: he likes to work with his hands and do something useful for people. He is not going to return to journalism. “Work on a conditional“ Medusa ”, the editors of which are based abroad, is fraught with“ in agent ”, and I am not interested in the Russian media: this is either frank propaganda or an attempt to enjoy between the streams of rain,” explains Vasily. He believes that new people should come to journalism, because people like him are already “spoiled by censorship”.

I worked for too long, lined with red flags. The compromise was the very fact of work under this brand. To be associated with [the journalists of Komsomolskaya Pravda Ulyana] Skoribedom, [Alexander] Gamov, [Victor] Baranz, [Alexander] Kotz, [as well as with the General Director of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Vladimir] Sungorkin and other faithful Putins - this is a very stringent compromise. And despite the fact that I worked on a local agenda, I often had to sit in a studio with a United Russia and play along with them, asking consistent and convenient questions.

"Little Patriotism"

Olga (the name changed at the request of the heroine) from Buryatia leads the social networks of the private television channel in Ulan-Ude. Prior to this, Olga worked for ten years a journalist on municipal television.

“If we had training manuals on Goskanal - we are friends with this, we don’t touch it, and we are soaking this - then there are relative freedom, there are no spoke lists,” she says.

This spring the situation has changed. The channel depended on advertisers, but after the introduction of sanctions and price growth, many companies tightened their belts and refused to advertise. The founder is trying to conclude as many contracts as possible with the authorities in order to survive and save the team. “In general, in our edition, everything is against [war], there are no those who support. Maybe a couple of people, and those drivers, ”says Olga.

In the first week of the war, the editorial office sent a photo of the announcement in a local store, which said that sugar is issued 10 kilograms in one hand. The photograph was published along with the commentary of the Ministry of Industry that this is legal, Olga says.

So then the director forced us to remove all posts: she said that this is the decision of the head of Buryatia himself [Alexei Tsydenov]. He believes that this is the “provocations of the Nazis” and in our Buryatia this is not and cannot be. Just two days passed, I myself went to the store and saw a similar announcement [about 10 kilograms of sugar in one hand], and no one denied it. That is, when the federal media began to write about it, then we could.

According to Siberia. Realities , Buryatia is a leader in the number of losses in the war in Ukraine among regions in Siberia and the Far East. When in March the first funeral of the military who died in the war, in the presence of the head of the region, Alexei Tsydenov, was held in the republic, on the channel where Olga works, this was lit, but without “Hurray-patriotism”. If they published a post about the deceased, then they gave dry information: how the person was called, where exactly he lived, whether he had children.

“I tried to insert at least some five kopecks, write for example:“ Ivan was forever left for 19 years “at the end, it’s fat to allocate it. At least somehow show the inhumanity of the situation. The wording “Fighted with Nazism” we did not use, ”says Olga. She claims that not using such formulations was the position of the publication.

At some point, the administration noticed this, and the founder through the director handed over to the employees that in the publication “little patriotism”, says Olga. The director of the channel at the general meeting said that she was responsible for a group of a hundred people: “Everyone has children and loans, it is clear that everything is in shock, but it is necessary to save the television company.” Olga ordered: do not put on social networks data on the dead.

And there were two, three people a day - [put it,] only if the relatives themselves asked about it. Now there is no information about the dead on the website of the administration of the region, it appears only in chats of residents in Vaiber. And they write about someone on the school website, for example. Of these places, we also cannot take [information]: like, [the authorities] follow us. I don’t know if they really are watching or this founder thinks so.

In April, the head of Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov conducted a live broadcast, answered questions from subscribers on VKontakte . Olga looked at him, looking for interesting news reasons for posts (incidents in the region or complaints of residents) and also wrote two questions. The first concerned the bill adopted in April 2022 on simplified buildings near Lake Baikal. Ecologists are sure that this law allows unscrupulous developers not to conduct an environmental examination before the start of construction on the lake. The second question is about the number of Buryats who died in the war in Ukraine.

It is clear that no one answered my questions. But later the editor sent a piece of her correspondence with the head of the city administration for information policy. She threw her screenshots of my questions and asked: “Are you not afraid that she, like Ovsyannikova, will throw something away and put you up?” I replied that I was doing my job as a journalist. The head of Buryatia should have an opinion on such issues. The editor asked me to continue to be careful.

According to Olga, the administration is not the first time made the editorial offices. When in February 2021 in Ulan-Ude dogs bit 20-year-old Tatyana Loskutnikova (she received serious injuries), Olga wrote in a commentary on the news that after such the mayor of the city, Igor Shutenkov should resign. “So the leadership later told me that this way and so - the mayor was offended,” she recalls.

Olga continues to work on the channel. The leadership, according to her, decided not to write about the dead in the war. Now the ether is filled with ordinary news: communal apartment, potholes on the road, opening a new school or kindergarten. “As you want, it is impossible to cover the special operation, but I don’t want to,” says Olga.

The situation of Olga’s work is not easy for her family. Olga’s husband was threatened at work if she “does not calm down”, and he “is generally worried.” The journalist believes that “it is partially to blame,” because “you can’t work in the loyal media authorities and at the same time publicly declare an excellent position”. But she does not want to quit work-including because of financial obligations to the family. Olga, according to her, was “in a stupid situation” when you need to choose which side you are on, so she feels that “she walks with a pot on her head, does not solve anything, but it would be necessary to [solve].”

"Your daddy is very swollen"

Valery Potashov worked in one of the largest Internet publications of Karelia “Capital on the One” almost from the date of its founding in 2003. He says that although this media had contracts about the information support of the republican authorities, the journalists could write quite freely about Russian realities. Potashov was engaged in political and economic topics about the cooperation of the region with Finland.

Conflicts with the owner of the publication-the entrepreneur and vice-speaker of the Karelian parliament Ilya Rakovsky-had Potashov, according to him, were before the start of the war in Ukraine. Basically, they arose due to critical materials about the republican authorities, the activities of the governor, deputies of the Karelian parliament and protests, for example, in support of Alexei Navalny and historian Yuri Dmitriev . But Potashov usually managed to smooth out the corners.

“The“ capital ”positioned itself for quite some time as a“ liberal ”publication, where a variety of opinions were presented, from pro -government and absenteeism to clearly opposition,” Valery says that the publication managed to increase the audience and sell advertising well.

The leadership prohibited the war about the war. “It was possible to run into a lock or a fine - it would have killed us. The site came out official reports and statements of pro -government structures that the economy, despite sanctions, continues to develop, ”Potashov explains.

In his texts, Potashov continued to talk about the influence of war on the region. The journalist managed to write only three material. The first is about the ban on the European Union for the supply of wood from Karelia. Europe was one of the main markets for wood products for Karelia: Karelia sent birch balance sheets to Finland, which are not so widely used in Russia, fuel pellets in Scandinavia, and pylomaterials throughout Europe.

“All these products should be certified, but the largest players of voluntary forest certification have stopped working with Russian companies and suspended their certificates. In early April, both the EU and Russia banned the import and export of timber as mutual sanctions, ”Potashov explains.

The second text is about the possible entry of Finland to NATO. This material just reflected the main consequence for the region from invasion of Ukraine. “Then one of my colleagues who receives information from the FSB warned me that“ my daddy was very swollen, ”and said that if I have the opportunity to leave, it is better to leave,” recalls Valery. But the journalist thought that this was “His Earth” and he would not go anywhere.

After the release of the third text - an interview with the lawyer Natalia Chernova about what they can condemn under the article on fakes and “discrediting” the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the owner of the publication Ilya Rakovsky, according to Potashov, called to the FSB and hinted that the journalist should be removed. ” Medusa sent a request to the FSB, but at the time of publication of this text she did not receive an answer. Ilya Rakovsky told Medusa that no one called him to the FSB about the texts of Valery Potashov. “They [Potashov’s articles] are all on the site. Accordingly, there was no conversation that there was no journalist in the publication, ”he added.

“This was not said directly, but, as I understand it, from the words of the chief editor [Natalia Zakharchuk], he [Rakovsky] was confronted with a choice: if you want to work further, then I should not be,” says Potashov. “I myself understood that the corridor of freedom is so narrow that soon there would be nothing to write about at all.” Medusa asked Natalya Zakharchuk to comment on this statement by Potashov, but did not receive an answer.

At the end of April, Potashov wrote a letter of resignation. He “did not” wait for a call from the FSB.

On this, my official career of the journalist ended, and as I understand it, the path to Karelian journalism is closed to me. Another important point: I spoke quite sharply about what I could not write about in the media, on my Facebook page and in my telegram channel . And I think that my posts annoyed the FSB and our authorities even more than publications in the “capital on the One”.

According to the journalist, none of the employees of the publication where he worked has supported the war in Ukraine, but the colleague did not protest against his departure. He reacted to this with understanding, because "when you have a mortgage and children, you will not act much."

Those who are still not afraid to openly oppose the Russian invasion cause respect to Potashov. He says that the appearance of Marina Ovsyannikova with an anti -war poster on the air of the Time program became the best that he had seen on federal channels in recent years. He does not doubt the sincerity of her act, because "he had a real risk of serious criminal punishment."

I think that with this act she “justified” everything that she did on the first [channel] before. Like the editors "Lenta.ru" . А вот громкие заявления тех, кто работал на пропаганду, но потом спокойно уехал из страны и «вдруг прозрел», меня совершенно не тронули ( Валерий Поташов говорит о журналистке Первого канала Жанне Агалаковой и ведущей программы «Сегодня» на НТВ Лилии Гильдеевой, которые начали высказываться против войны, уже будучи в Европе, — прим. «Медузы» ).

У Валерия была возможность работать за границей — «скандинавские коллеги предлагали», — но журналист не захотел оставлять в России свою пожилую мать. Он перебрался на дачу и рассчитывает пожить там до осени, поскольку он теперь совсем свободен — «без профессии, работы и долгов».