Inside and Outside Censorship: The Russian media landscape two years after the outbreak of the war

Over the past two years, the Russian media landscape has undergone an unprecedented transformation. After the outbreak of war and the effective introduction of military censorship in Russia, a significant portion of the country’s media relocated beyond the country's borders and continued its activities in an uncensored space. This became possible due to a fundamental change in the means of delivering content to consumers in previous years and represents a unique experiment, the results of which are likely to be significant not only for Russia but also for other countries undergoing processes of autocratisation.

The Russian media landscape today consists of a system of two large and interacting domains — censored and uncensored. In turn, the censored domain can be divided into several sectors: 1) officialdom — state and corporate media disseminating and supporting the official point of view; 2) corporate media operating under conditions of censorship but seeking to maintain journalistic relevance (‘Kommersant’, Forbes, etc.); 3) independent niche publications observing the rules of censorship but otherwise striving to maintain journalistic standards and resist propaganda (‘Novaya Gazeta’, ‘People of Baikal’, etc.). In the uncensored segment, the following coexist: 1) traditional media outlets which have relocated or were created by relocated journalists (‘Meduza’, ‘Dozhd’, ‘Kholod’, etc.); 2) media created by political and social organisations and initiatives (FBK media, OVD-Info, Teplitsa of Social Technologies, etc.); 3) author-driven, blogger projects (Dud, Kats, Plyushchev, Shikhman, etc.), which have a large audience.

In this article, Kseniya Luchenko describes how this large and unique system is currently functioning, what challenges different segments are facing, and what factors may determine its future evolution.

The Return of Censorship and Media Relocation

Russian media have experienced censorship and repressive pressure throughout the entire Putin era (effectively starting with the dismantling of NTV in 2001). This pressure has constantly intensified. By the start of the war, many major independent media outlets had already been included by the Ministry of Justice in the registry of ‘foreign agents’ (such as Meduza, TV Dozhd or Mediazona; in total, 42 organisations were on the list of ‘foreign agents’ at the beginning of the war), and the publication Proekt was recognised as an ‘undesirable organisation’. Most editorial offices received warnings from Roskomnadzor (the federal service that controls the mass media) multiple times, either for distributing ‘foul language and information harmful to the health and development of children’, for information describing ‘methods of making and using narcotic drugs’, or for containing ‘signs of extremism’ or ‘suicide propaganda’ (after two such warnings, a publication can be legally stripped of its licence and blocked).

In some cases, media outlets were not closed or blocked, but were transferred to other owners who were loyal to the government and, while retaining the brand, completely or partially changed their management, editorial staff, and editorial policy (the most high-profile cases include REN-TV in 2006, Lenta.ru in 2014, RBC in 2016, and Vedomosti in 2020).

And yet, despite this, that stage in the history of Russian independent journalism, which began in the late 1980s, and formally — after the entry into force of the Soviet law ‘On Press and Mass Media’ (May 1990), which abolished state censorship, ended only on the day of the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, when this censorship returned, albeit in other legal and practical forms.

By 24 February 2022 — immediately after the active phase of hostilities began — Roskomnadzor demanded that Russian publications use only information and data ‘obtained by them from official Russian sources’ when covering military events. On 4 March, President Putin signed a law on criminal liability for the distribution of ‘fakes’ ‘about the actions of the Russian military within the framework of special operations and calls for anti-Russian sanctions'. During the first two weeks of the war, Roskomnadzor blocked the majority of independent publications, while others, such as Novaya Gazeta and The Bell, suspended war-related publications temporarily, or, like Colta.ru and Znak.com, froze their websites altogether.

The choice for editorial offices was and remains simple: either face criminal prosecution or assist in propaganda by publishing 'information' permitted by official bodies. For publications operating under Western franchises, such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Esquire, licences were revoked as part of the sanctions; some of them re-registered and started operating under Russian names (for example, the Russian Esquire became 'Rules of Life'). The most symbolic events were the closure of the radio station Ekho Moskvy, one of the main brands of the victory of democracy in August 1991, and the revocation of the licence from the legendary Novaya Gazeta, which had been publishing for thirty years and whose editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

Throughout 2022, between 1000 and 1500-1800 journalists and media workers left Russia, according to various estimates, with most leaving immediately at the end of February or the beginning of March. Some of them received direct threats and signals from sources within the security forces that they could be arrested. Although later Tikhon Dzyadko, the editor-in-chief of the Dozhd TV channel, would say that it looked like a planned campaign to squeeze independent journalists out of the country, no one was arrested and entire editorial offices were allowed to leave quietly. Major Western media outlets such as the BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the New York Times closed their Moscow offices and evacuated their staff. As a result, large Russian media hubs have emerged in Tbilisi, Riga, Prague, Vilnius, Berlin, and the Balkans. Due to significant changes in information delivery channels in previous years, after the introduction of state censorship, there was an unprecedented relocation of a significant portion of the national media infrastructure abroad.

Two years later, it became clear that the Russian media community not only survived the crisis, but also largely maintained its unity while being divided by the borders of the Russian Federation. With non-functioning political institutions and a collapsed civil society, the political and social role of journalism has even increased. According to Maxim Trudolyubov, the editor-in-chief of The Russia File project at the Kennan Institute, ‘Russian-language journalism is now almost equal to the public sphere, since competitive politics is impossible, and public and civic activity is also extremely difficult'.

The media now perform several functions: they remain an important source of information about Russian society, economy, and politics for both external and internal audiences; they shape the common agenda and worldview for Russian-speaking readers/viewers scattered now from Thailand to New York; they represent the interests of their voiceless Russian readers/viewers within the country; they document the events related to the war for history, keeping a chronicle (as the editor-in-chief of one of the major Russian media outlets said, 'the entire journalistic community is inadequate to the volume of horror happening'). Meanwhile, another classic function of journalism — to act as a mediator between the authorities and society — seems to have become obsolete due to lack of necessity.

Conditions of survival: distribution, traffic, financial models

The majority of the audience, which still remains in Russia, has to make efforts to obtain verified information: subscribing to Telegram channels, using VPNs, searching for website mirrors, bypassing blocks, and observing safety rules (for example, not reposting ‘foreign agents’ and especially ‘undesirable organisations’, unsubscribing from Telegram channels when crossing the border, even if travelling to Kazakhstan or Turkey). The value of a loyal audience in such conditions increases exponentially.

There are also opposing trends: researchers from within Russia’s advertising industry believe that ‘the blocking of Western services and negative news streams have led to a growing trend towards “conservation” of media consumption, the closure of the audience to new formats, and increased atomisation’. Many media managers note that in 2023 the audience was tired of ‘bad news’ and avoided it, and the rush of subscribers in the first year of the war was replaced by apathy.

None of the conventional pre-war content delivery methods are effective; news aggregators hardly bring any traffic to independent media. Russia's largest aggregator, Yandex.Novosti, is now owned by the VK holding company, which is run by the son of Sergei Kirienko, the president’s Chief-of-Staff, and it is clear that Yandex is directing traffic towards pro-state media holdings. Meta's social networks (Facebook and Instagram), which were one of the main sources of traffic before the war, have been declared extremist and blocked in Russia, as well as Twitter (X), which, according to Roskomnadzor, ‘has become a platform for disseminating inaccurate publicly relevant information about Russia's military operation in Ukraine’. Media analysts have yet to figure out how to recognise and count the traffic that goes to social networks via VPN connections. The Google News service has also been blocked by Roskomnadzor, but the remaining traffic of independent media still goes through Google, mainly through search queries. This traffic is unstable because there is no understanding of the principles and criteria by which Google's algorithms optimise the display of Russian-language resources in the search engine and in the Google Discover recommendation service.

The main remaining channel for content distribution is social networks not yet blocked in Russia, primarily Telegram. The complete dependence of editorial offices on various external platforms creates problems for managers in determining the main audience and in quantitatively measuring traffic. Under these conditions, even the chat function on YouTube during broadcasts serves as an indirect source of knowledge about the audience, its interests, moods and geographical location — many media outlets use this source for want of anything better. The size of the audience is roughly determined by the sum of visits on all sites with geographical error due to VPN — clicks from search engines to the site and its mirrors, views on YouTube, Telegram and TikTok.

In early 2024, Reporters Without Borders announced the launch of a free satellite package ‘Svoboda’, which includes nine independent Russian-language TV and radio projects (‘Echo’, ‘Present Time’, OstWest TV and others). This content is broadcast via the Eutelsat Hotbird 13 satellite and is theoretically already available to 4.5 million households in Russia and 800,000 in the occupied territories of Ukraine. However, currently, to watch these channels, technical efforts are required: installing a satellite dish of suitable diameter and tuning it. If this project were to be successful, it could become the most effective way to deliver materials from independent media within Russia. However, there are significant doubts about this for now.

The financial models have completely changed. The processes that are taking place in the global media market due to digitalisation and the growing influence of social networks have had a specific profile in Russia due to political circumstances. A media business built on a combination of advertising and subscription models no longer works anywhere in the world in its pure form, and in the Russian media market, it never had a chance to develop in more prosperous times and is now completely irrelevant. In conditions of political pressure, it has become impossible for large classical publications, which society would perceive as socially significant institutions, to exist, and for major private businesses to participate, becoming owners of these publications and supporting them from reputational and value-based perspectives, as is the case with global media brands of quality publications like The Washington Post, The Economist, and The New York Times. Within normal circumstances, Novaya Gazeta, Ekho Moskvy, Vedomosti, and Kommersant could have claimed the role of such media outlets.

The main advertisers of medium and small niche publications (the remaining independent media in Russia belong to these categories) were mostly foreign companies that left the Russian media market due to sanctions. Many subscription services stopped working with Russian bank cards, and with the change of payment systems, a significant portion of subscribers did not return, thus media lost another source of revenue. Against the backdrop of the war, it became practically impossible to conduct fundraising campaigns. Small advertisers and crowdfunding remain. Transitioning to a paywall and making access to all website materials paid is still not profitable. Relatively stable income from monetization starts at around 20,000 subscriptions for monthly payments, which is an almost unattainable figure as Russian readers are not used to paying for access to information.

Media managers tend to be quite pessimistic about the prospects for increasing traffic, advertising revenue, and the ability to survive through the sale of other products (newsletters, events). Moreover, there is always a risk that the Ministry of Justice will list a publication as a ‘foreign agent’, in which case it will be virtually impossible to keep it running while remaining in Russia, as both advertisers and subscribers will face additional risks and fines due to their affiliation with a ‘foreign agent’, and the costs of maintaining the legal entity will increase. These are the reasons that, for example, the publication ‘Advokatskaya Ulitsa’ closed down.

The editorial offices that have left Russia have different funding schemes, and none of them provide long-term sustainability either. First, there are media owned by political organisations, the Russian opposition, the new ‘party press’ (primarily the media holdings of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Mikhail Khodorkovsky), which survive on the budgets of these organisations and are subordinate to their political orientations.

Second, there are publications that exist as media add-ons for activist, charitable or human rights projects, meaning they were created as part of the fundraising strategy of these organisations to raise awareness of their activities (e.g. ‘Teplitsa of Social Technologies’ or ‘Support Service’).

Third, there are author-driven, personal projects on the edge of blogging and journalism, mainly YouTube channels — if they have high traffic and coverage, they are monetised through donations (Maxim Kats, Oleg Kashin, Irina Shikhman, Yuri Dud, Dmitry Kolezev, Ilya Varlamov, Maria Borzunova, etc.). Typically, they work in one of two formats: an author's video column (here the product sold is an opinion and position with which the viewer sympathises) or an interview (then they sell an ‘interesting interlocutor’). In early March, the State Duma passed a law in its third reading that prohibits advertising in the media of independent journalists who have been declared ‘foreign agents’ (since the beginning of 2022, 588 individuals and organisations, including 45 media outlets, have been included on the list of foreign agents). This hit video projects on YouTube particularly hard. According to Roskomnadzor, the advertising market of ‘foreign agent’ bloggers totalled 130 million rubles, and for many of them this was their main source of income. Katerina Gordeeva, author of one of the most popular Russian-language YouTube channels, announced the suspension of the project immediately after the new law came into force; Irina Shikhman, Dmitry Kolezev and other bloggers have reported difficulties.

Finally, the fourth group consists of independent media outlets that are engaged in classical journalism. Among them there are major players, such as Meduza or Dozhd, medium-sized ones like Mediazona, Important Stories, Proekt, Verstka, Kholod — and dozens of smaller projects: ‘Cherta', ‘Novaya Vkladka', ‘Vlasnaya', ‘Perito', ‘Beda', etc. Many were launched in Russia, but some emerged in emigration, bringing together freelance journalists.

The founder of The Bell, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, believes that none of these media outlets can claim to be commercially successful and profitable for their founders. In this case, she says, ‘we have to recognise that if you write on socio-political topics, you are doing public work for the sake of public interests’. Media have become NGOs, and they should think of themselves as NGOs and base their fundraising strategies on that premise.

These publications rely on donors — to a significant extent, if they are large media outlets, or entirely, if they are small projects. More often than not, these donors are European or American, government or private funds, which allocate funding based on their values and political objectives. The ideal ‘match’ happens when a media outlet finds a donor with matching values (e.g., environmental publications find themselves in the pool of ‘green’ foundations). Donors do not moderate content and do not influence management decisions, but nevertheless, complete dependence on grantors affects journalists' self-perception.

For European organisations — both at the level of the European Union and at the level of individual states — support for Russian-language media in exile is motivated by the protection of freedom of expression and the understanding of the right to information as one of the basic elements of rights and freedoms. Thus, they declare non-interference in editorial policy. In the American tradition, KPIs suggest that the media should formulate more specific goals for their work, which may include countering propaganda.

Further, media in exile can partially earn money for content production by selling additional services. The Russian-blocked publication Papera moved to Tbilisi and sells its own VPN with technical support, conducts sociological research, and organises training and retreats in Georgia. The Bell sells some of its newsletters and expert materials, and has organised an online business school with professors from Silicon Valley. This allows publications to be more sustainable and have an additional pillar of support beyond grants.

Media in exile not only need financial support but also bureaucratic, legal, and organisational assistance provided by various organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, MiCT, Media Hub Riga, Free Russia, which systematically address issues with visas, document management, providing co-working spaces, equipment and studios for recording videos and podcasts.

The grey zone: between censorship and journalism

There is a certain prejudice that all Russian journalism has been ‘relocated’ and now operates remotely, with only tabloids and propaganda left within Russia. This generalisation is understandable if one radically labels all media that comply with Russian law as propaganda and ignores small regional and niche publications. However, if one considers only those authors, editorial boards, and brands that operate outside the Russian Federation and are therefore free from its regulatory constraints to be journalism, this would present a distorted and ideologised picture that excludes important processes taking place within the country’s media landscape.

Major uncensored media outlets (such as Kommersant, RBC, Vedomosti) continue to operate in Russia. ‘Russia is a serious, large country with a big economy, and business media perform an important function. Someone has to describe deals, negotiations, and lobbying', says Elizaveta Osetinskaya. Only the large editorial offices that remain in Russia can do this work. In addition, they still communicate with sources in the authorities — or at least broadcast signals through the management and editors-in-chief. A professional reader can find a wealth of informative material in such publications concerning Russia's economy, which often serves as a primary source for analysis, as well as read between the lines and among omissions to find important details about Russian social life. Although it is common in independent media to consider these publications as ‘propaganda mouthpieces', the editors use their news sections as a source of information about what is happening in Russia, at least in the fields of economics and technology.

‘We cannot fully perform the function of full coverage because war is a closed topic', says Dmitry Butrin, deputy editor-in-chief of the Kommersant Publishing House.The topic is mainly closed in a legal sense: journalists can either cite official reports from the Ministry of Defence or seek confirmation of information found by journalists and official comments, which, according to editorial staff, are almost never given by the ministry and its subordinate structures.‘War is like a hundred daughters of Putin. It would be easier for everyone if the state imposed real military censorship', responded one journalist working in Russia when asked where the 'double solid line' now lies. No ‘themes’ or ‘guidelines’ are handed down from above to these publications, and in rare cases the editors-in-chief intervene directly in the way a topic is presented or warn against writing about something, but in general there is more of a consensus of self-censorship and an informed understanding by the management of the authorities' wishes in the most generalised form. At the same time, no one can say exactly what, outside of what is obviously prohibited by law, can be written about and what cannot be touched, creating a constant background of tension. The only employee of these media organisations who gives interviews, Dmitry Butrin, openly admits that the degree of compromise he has to make to avoid being fired from Kommersant makes him ‘feel bad’.

Nevertheless, these are publications whose websites have between 18 million (Kommersant) and 38 million (RBC) hits per month, according to LiveInternet data. They are read by those who do not use VPNs or are wary of following the publications of ‘undesirable organisations’. At the same time, at least some of the staff are against the war. For example, Kommersant journalist Elena Chernenko initiated an anti-war letter by journalists at the very beginning of the full-scale invasion and was expelled from the Foreign Ministry pool, where she had been a member for 11 years, but was not fired from the newspaper. These journalists convey their sentiments to their readers, sometimes using guerrilla methods.

The second category of media that have not left Russia and have become very prominent in recent months are small independent local and niche publications that report on what is happening in Russian regions (‘Yuga.ru’, ‘Govorit NeMoskva’, ‘Karavan’, etc.) or in specific areas of life (‘Mel’ on education, ‘Takie Dela’ on charity). They comply with the law, by labelling ‘foreign agents’, and writing ‘special military operation’ instead of ‘war’. According to Evgenia Volunkova, editor-in-chief of Takie Dela, ‘I comfort myself by saying that our audience is probably smart and understands everything. When we write the word ‘special operation’ in inverted commas and provide a footnote why we write it that way, they probably get it’.

These publications often use Aesopian language, silences, or indirectly address information topics. For example, they do not write directly about Prigozhin's rebellion but promptly report on the cancellation of graduation parties, or they do not write directly about mobilisation but create materials about military departments in universities and student deferrals, telling human stories. The context is clear to both editors and readers; such publications work as a wink-wink, a ‘password and recall’. The materials of these publications serve as illustrations for sociologists and economists, providing a more comprehensive picture of what people in Russian regions are experiencing, their sentiments, and how their attitudes towards reality are changing. Journalists know what concerns their audience—these are their neighbours, classmates, relatives, and they are in tune with them. Most importantly, they represent these people, give them a voice, make them visible, and to some extent reflect their subjectivity, including political subjectivity, showing them their own lives not through the lens of federal television channels. Journalists and editors acknowledge that they do not know when or under what ban they will fall, but they hope to keep their publications open and to remain in Russia longer to share the fate of their subjects and audiences.

A unique phenomenon for Russian journalism is the weekly ‘Sobesednik’. This has been published for 40 years and in recent decades has been one of the most widely circulated tabloids. However, beneath the bawdy headlines, crossword puzzles and horoscopes that are typical of tabloids, it hides political content and genuine investigations. As the journalistic landscape inside Russia has considerably thinned, Sobesednik has emerged as the only publication that regularly publishes ‘foreign agents’, can feature a picture of Yekaterina Shulman or political prisoner Ilya Yashin on the front page, and interviews Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has said that Sobesednik is read in prisons. Moreover, the newspaper is sold at every kiosk and postmen deliver it to mailboxes all over the country.

Oleg Roldugin, Sobesednik's editor-in-chief, said in an interview with Novaya Gazeta and on the podcast ‘Davai Golosom’ that he does not understand why the publication had not been closed down yet and denied having ‘protection’. Sobesednik is a publishing house, a business built on the sale of reading material for commuters — scandals, recipe books, horoscopes, and children's magazines called ‘Razvivashka’. The newspaper survives on income from advertising and sales. Roskomnadzor has periodically blocked the publication's website, but Sobesednik only started to get into serious trouble after the publication of an issue commemorating Alexei Navalny with a large photo of the murdered politician on the front page. The entire print run was withdrawn from circulation, and queues formed at the editorial office, where several hundred copies were still available. For the time being, Sobesednik continues to operate as before, but it is not clear how long the authorities will tolerate this.

Relocated journalism: substantive challenges

But, of course, the most significant part of Russian journalism consists of media in exile, also known as ‘relocated’ or ‘offshore’ journalism. In addition to the previously mentioned political, activist, author-driven, and ‘classic’ publications, it includes the Russian-language offices of Western corporations — primarily the BBC Russian Service, Svoboda and Current Time, and to some extent, The Moscow Times. This unprecedented exodus of an entire professional sphere from the country has been made possible by digitalization and the remote work and resource distribution algorithms developed during repression and pandemic. According to the latest data published in a JxFund study, 93 Russian-language media outlets operate outside Russia, with a combined audience (despite the aforementioned counting difficulties) of between 6.7 and 9.6 million unique visitors, of which up to 7.8 million are in Russia (the study did not include Western corporations such as the BBC Russian Service, Svoboda media holding, Voice of America, etc., so the total audience would be larger if those are included).

The main problem for journalists who have left Russia is the distance from the country, the inability to work ‘on the ground, and their fear of losing touch with and relevance for their audiences. Their primary methods of work now are twofold — communicating with sources and subjects through social networks and messengers, and using OSINT (open-source intelligence) technologies. Stringers — freelance correspondents who continue to anonymously gather information for relocated media — remain in Russia. Employees of independent TV channels, after arranging an interview with a subject, send a camera operator who they direct via video call. The operator and subject might be in Samara, while the correspondent asks questions and gives filming recommendations from Prague or Riga. Often, not only the names of operators or correspondents but also those of interviewees and experts remain anonymous; their faces are blurred, and their voices distorted. Those who appear openly on emigrant TV channels or as commentators on websites are denounced for being associated with ‘undesirable organisations’ and ‘foreign agents’, which can lead to criminal charges. ‘When we were filming a report from the Belgorod region, we had a stringer cameraman working for us, he travelled in a car with some volunteer, and that volunteer turned him in to the police at the first checkpoint', says Tikhon Dzyadko, editor-in-chief of the Dozhd TV channel. Lola Tagayeva, editor-in-chief of Verstka, believes that with the technological capabilities provided by modern communication tools, there is no need to put people at risk: ‘It is very hard to go to bed every day and think: will something happen to my correspondent or not?’ Tagayeva believes that the loss of quality in remote work is minimal (unless, of course, you are a TV channel that needs video footage), and the risks are not justified. On the other hand, there are still journalists in Russia who take these risks consciously, based on their values and principles: they do not want to leave and want to work in their profession, believing that by helping independent media they are contributing to the greater good.

Russian media correspondents, citizens of the Russian Federation, cannot go to either side of the front. At the very beginning of the war, only three Russian journalists were in Ukraine — Elena Kostyuchenko of Novaya Gazeta, Lilia Yapparova of Meduza, and Oksana Baulina of The Insider, who died in Kyiv. In all three cases, it was an exception made possible by the chaos of the first weeks of the invasion. Now, a Russian passport and affiliation with Russian media, even those in exile, make it impossible for a journalist to be present in the conflict zone (not only near the front lines but also within the territories of both states).

Another problem is that Russia is turning into a ‘black box’: fewer and fewer sources are willing to give comments to journalists. This is partly due to the fact that officials, employees of state or quasi-state structures, politicians and other insiders have become afraid to talk to media outlets, especially those outside Russia, even journalists who they have known for a long time are seen as less trustworthy; and the risks of law enforcement agencies tracing contacts are too high. Media labelled as ‘foreign agents’ and especially ‘undesirable organisations’ have long since been denied any official or ‘on-the-record’ comment, but now most sources simply refuse to talk. The significant reduction in their pool is largely because the circle of informed individuals has significantly narrowed. Only a few people are aware of decisions in each sphere at a level where leaks do not occur. ‘Sources have sort of been reconceptualised: they no longer explain decisions they are involved with, but they describe the process — how it happens. From this, at least, one can draw conclusions about the balance of power, who is pushing for what, and that is already quite important', says the editor-in-chief of an independent publication.

The issue of maintaining professional impartiality and adhering to journalistic standards in a situation marked by global polarisation and the specific combination of distance from the audience, the inability to do on-the-ground reporting, and extreme source secrecy, is mostly solved with the help of strict criteria of information verifiability. There are no taboo topics, but there are topics that are fundamentally unverifiable. ‘Our approach is to avoid topics that could involve a lot of setups, intricacies, provocations, when we cannot verify whether it is a trick or the truth. Our “censorship” is to avoid topics where you can become a tool of someone else's manipulation. We write about what we can verify in the current circumstances', says Lola Tagaeva. High quality fact-checking and the separation of facts from opinions is the only way to maintain professional autonomy when it is ethically impossible, as journalists are supposed to do, to remain personally ‘above the fray’. The more emotionally involved the correspondent is, the more sensitive the topic is for the audience, and the higher the risks of manipulation, the more thorough the verification and search for evidence needs to be, The resources of all Russian-language independent media are insufficient to verify every story directly or indirectly related to the war and its consequences. Partly for this reason, collaborative projects among several media outlets have become more common. The longest-running example of such cooperation is the name-by-name count of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, conducted since the start of the war by the BBC Russian Service and Mediazona.

In a situation where the journalistic community is geographically dispersed and exists in difficult circumstances, the role of platforms that would facilitate the discussion of professional standards and the redefinition of values based on new experiences and needs has increased. The ‘Editorial Board’ (Redkollegia) award has largely taken on these tasks. It was established in Russia in 2016 by Boris Zimin and the Zimin Foundation to honour authors of the highest quality publications in Russian on a monthly basis, and Redkollegia has quickly become the most prestigious independent professional award. The jury's decisions are the subject of constant debate about quality standards and journalistic ethics, with many disagreeing and taking offence, but this has kept the process alive.

After the outbreak of war and emigration, the award has not only survived and relocated with the media, but has become an institution around which the journalistic community is regrouping. It possesses sufficient reputational stability and clear value capital to involve journalists who remain in Russia and those who have left, those writing in political and independent projects, and both small and large media outlets. It is important that the Redkollegia has grown organically from the needs of the professional environment, and the majority of journalists, despite sometimes disagreeing with the jury's decisions, consider it their own. There are additional projects around the award, such as the ‘Davai Golosom’ podcast, where colleagues analyse the nominees' work both as professionals and as readers. As of today, this is the only platform, apart from Telegram chats and meetings in kitchens in Riga, Berlin or Tbilisi, where journalists from different publications can discuss how they are coping with wartime challenges, develop joint strategies and navigate conflicts together. The community likely needs more consolidating institutions like this one.

The Russian media landscape and scenarios for its future

When examining the Russian media landscape as a whole today, we can distinguish several groups. For media that have remained in Russia and comply with legal requirements, the following categories exist:

1. Official propaganda media directly affiliated with the state (the specifics of this segment are not considered in this article);

2. Publications that aim to remain relevant and present publicly relevant information about what is happening in the country. They are restricted by censorship and editorial loyalty rules (‘Kommersant’, Forbes, ‘Vedomosti’, etc.);

3. Independent publications that continue to operate according to ethical and professional standards of journalism, while observing censorship restrictions (‘Novaya Gazeta’, ‘Takie Dela’, ‘People of Baikal’, ‘Mel’, ‘Sobesednik’, etc.). Some of these editorial teams are partially relocated.

In the uncensored, relocated group of publications, the following can be distinguished:

1. Independent classical media whose editorial offices have left Russia (‘Dozhd’, ‘Meduza’, ‘Important Stories’, ‘Verstka’, ‘Kholod’, etc.);

2. Media created by political actors (media produced by the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Khodorkovsky's holding);

3. Niche media created by re-located NGOs (OVD-Info, ‘Teplitsa of Social Technologies’) or those established since the beginning of the war (‘Support Service’);

4. Author-driven, ‘blogger’ projects (Maxim Kats, Alexander Plyushchev, Katerina Gordeeva, Irina Shikhman, Yuri Dud and others);

5. Russian-language editorial offices of European and American holdings (BBC Russian Service, Svoboda Holding, Voice of America).

The future of Russian-language journalism in the near future depends on whether Russia will become even more closed off. If Internet regulation follows the ‘Chinese scenario’ - with firewalls, VPN and YouTube blocks, complete control over domestic traffic, and the unification of government services and communication in one application with a unified account — journalism will shift to a completely underground mode of content delivery. This would almost entirely eliminate the possibility of gathering information within Russia, even from anonymous sources and experts. Additionally, it would make it nearly impossible for media outlets to learn anything about their audience.

This scenario would effectively recreate the degree of isolation that Cold War-era ‘voices’ and ‘tamizdat’ experienced. Consequently, opinions, interpretations and analytics will inevitably prevail over fact-based journalism, and the increasingly polarised social climate will also contribute to this. The tightening of repressive laws or the active enforcement of existing ones (such as the ban on ‘LGBT propaganda’, the criminalisation of ‘fakes’ about the army, etc.), along with the expansion of the registry of ‘foreign agents’ will lead to the closure of any independent media outlets that are still operating in Russia, and their staff will most likely have to leave. A change of management or other forms of radical change in the editorial policy of Kommersant, Vedomosti and RBC will minimise the availability of relevant information about Russian business, etc. While these radical scenarios are possible, they are still considered unlikely.

If things continue as they are now, the main challenges for exiled media will be funding and sustainability. This unique experiment in mass media relocation will face various critical junctures that will shape its future. Will small projects survive, or will they need to form conglomerates or merge with existing major outlets? Is the current number of exiled media appropriate, or should there be more or fewer? Will the content and formats of publications need to be revised to achieve greater coverage within Russia? How unified will the information space remain if the needs of those who have left increasingly diverge from the interests of the audience still in Russia? What will the identity of the Russian journalistic community be? Will it be focused on returning and starting a new chapter in the history of independent media in Russia, or will it be about the survival of a single generation of journalists in exile? Will journalists be able to defend their autonomy from political opposition, or will this prove unnecessary?

Much will depend on the development of the political situation and the course of the war, as well as the position of Russia in international relations, the outcome of the American presidential and European parliamentary elections, and the global economic situation. The period of turbulence is not yet over, and these questions remain unanswered.