See you again!

Dear readers!

We have decided to suspend the release of "Fringes".

“The oldest opposition online media”, “pioneers of the fight against blocking”, “exemplary democracy”, “frenzied Russophobes” - we do not refuse any of these honorary titles. But they cannot be melted down into shells.

Don’t cling to the old brand, but rethink your own 23-year history and ask yourself a simple question: how is your project useful for winning? This is the least that is available to a Russian-language broadcaster, even if it seems to boast a consistent editorial policy and a stable audience.

Today there is nothing conducive to memoir syrup. We will not be nostalgic, thank you and kiss. We will talk about mistakes. About how inspired the coverage of the Russian toy protest was. How they promoted the discourse of “non-violence” (even for filming actions like the march along Tverskaya with the banner “ Death to the Kremlin occupiers ”, high-status liberals declared us provocateurs). As if by inertia, they handed the microphone to opposition authorities. How diligently they recorded the “achievements of civil society”, turning a blind eye to imperial revanchism.

In the spring of 2014, we became the first registered Russian media outlet to be blocked under the “Lugovoi Law” - for the truth about Russian aggression against Ukraine. It seemed then that the survival of "Fringes" was symbolically important in order to challenge Putin's censorship. Popularizing ways to bypass blocking, creating hundreds of mirrors, playing cat and mouse with Roskompozor - in fact, this was not an end in itself.

Where have we been for eight years? We fought against the “sandwich”, against the normalization of aggression. It was a struggle for terms, for a vocabulary to describe reality. “Separatists”, “civil war in Donbass”, “annexation of Crimea” - today we all know the price of deadly editorial dishonesty.

"Grani" tried to break the information blockade of the Crimean Tatars. When they were sentenced to Stalin’s terms, a powerful jammer was activated in the “independent” Russian (including emigrant) media. We always fit in with the “wrong” dissidents - then the liberal media establishment will call them “urban crazy people who turned out to be right.”

Sometimes haters write to us on social networks: “But they were a good publication.” This is the most offensive thing. We really were once “friends” for the Russian opposition community, which is now reassembling and settling in exile, asking for donations for everything except the Armed Forces of Ukraine, promoting anti-Ukrainian narratives, lobbying for the lifting of sanctions, demanding privileges, dreaming of returning to Moscow on the “first flight” and writes about Ukraine’s military successes under the heading “What’s in it for me.” The builders of the “ European temple of Russian culture ” are ready to tear to pieces everyone who asks uncomfortable questions out loud. They immediately translate the conversation about a national catastrophe into the plane of “moral entrepreneurship”, “dividing the limited resource of moral correctness”. About this spiritual feast of the new Russian diaspora, busy with laundering and self-admiration, we have written a lot in the last year.

"Grani", of course, is not part of the ecosystem of Russian media in exile. But, unfortunately, we also come from there, from the oligarchic Moscow of the 90s and 2000s, from the Moscow media viper corrupted by easy money, infiltrated by the security officers, the fetid world of whiskey and hugs with ghouls. We are connected with this toxic environment by thousands of threads, and no Novodvorskaya columns will cancel this biographical fact . Today, when the beneficiaries of the Russian war machine shamelessly pose as its victims, can any dissident Russian project find not only a moral high ground, but simply the ground under its feet?

Restarting "Fringes" is only possible with a new command and a new program. This project should be dedicated to the collapse of the empire , decolonization, and the liberation struggle of the peoples of Russia . If you want to do such a project, write to assograni-at-gmail.com.

We will take care of the safety of the Granev archives. Our YouTube channel is a unique video chronicle of the protest movement of the times of mature Putinism. And don’t unsubscribe from our public pages just yet: Facebook , X , Telegram .

With faith in the victory of Ukraine,

your editors