Elena worked for Novaya Gazetta, the last independent newspaper in Russia.
She covered corruption, prison violence, gay rights and Chechnya.
This isn’t a job for the faint of heart. She has been stalked, arrested and beaten on many occasions. Her newsroom was harassed daily. In fact, 4 of her colleagues were murdered under her watch.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper was shut down. She left Russia and moved to Eastern Ukraine. She started systematically documenting war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians
https://femantiwar.org/en/interview-kostyuchenko/
She was forced to leave after Ukrainians warned her that Russian soldiers put a bounty on her head. (you can use english subtitles)
Then, a few weeks later, she was hospitalized.
Her food was poisoned in an attempt to kill her:
Elena miraculously survived and kept reporting.
She now teaches at Duke University in the US. When asked if she is afraid, she said the following:
Elena is one the bravest person I know.
When you think about it, people living in Western Democracies don’t know how good they have it. You can create a labor union in your company. You can run for mayor in your town. You can join an NGO and sue large corporations. Yes you can.
In my life, whenever I lack inner strength to do the right thing, I always think about her
I worry that
- ICE now knows where she is
- they have a quota
- their boss is a Russian asset and wants a pat on the head
Can we get her to safety before they grab her and ship her back to Vlad?
The last time she fled to safety, Putin poisoned her anyway. Then she reported on her own assassination, went to Trump’s America and wrote a book on how Putin is fascist. She clearly made a decision, and I respect the hell out of it.
The Tankies are gonna hate this one
As a member of .ML, thank you for showing us that not everyone on that instance is a tankie. There are other anti-authoritarian ideologies on the left before you get to Tankie-ism
I kinda feel so ashamed of myself knowing that I would never be able to be this brave…
Be kind to yourself. Bravery is a skill like any other, and training it is similar to weight training — trying to force yourself to do too much all at once can cause yourself harm in your quest to grow bravery.
People who are extremely brave have often developed that skill over an extended period, often due to the unfortunate circumstances of living under constant oppression. We hear about the large acts of bravery and boldness, but that kind of strength doesn’t just emerge spontaneously from nowhere. We don’t see the small acts of resistance and solidarity that enable people to grow into the kind of badass in the OP.
There are opportunities for developing bravery in your daily life, if you let yourself be open to them. It can start with something as trivial as politely refusing to let someone cut in front of you in the supermarket queue, or saying “what a weird thing to say” when someone makes a problematic joke in a scenario where most people just uncomfortably laugh. If you try to psyche yourself up for a small act of bravery and then chicken out, don’t beat yourself up about it — knowing how to safely “fail a rep” (to continue the weightlifting metaphor) is a normal part of training this skill, and there will always be more opportunities to try again.
The shame you’re feeling is because there’s a tension between the person you are now, and the person you’d like to be. When leveraged well, this can be a good thing. Don’t dwell too much on who you are now, but look towards the person you’d like to be. Don’t compare yourself to the peaks of bravery, but rather just consider what a version of you who is a tad more brave would be like; if you place too much distance between the person you’d like to be and who you are now, then the thread connecting those two versions of you will snap, and it will seem impossible to improve.
Don’t try to be a hero — just try to be a little bit braver than you are right now, and keep trying. You might not recognise it as such, but I’d say that acknowledging the shame you feel is a small act of bravery. That’s a good starting step.
Tough lady. Hats off to her.
Several people from Novaya Gazeta founded the offshoot Novaya Gazeta Europe, which continues to work from Latvia, in both Russian and English.
I recommend donating to them if you’d like to support independent reporting in Russia, seeing as Russians and Russian advertisers can’t do that anymore.
Meduza is another outlet that could use your support. They were previously known as Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru, both of which were captured by pro-government oligarchs. Meduza, in contrast, is owned by its journalists. They were likewise persecuted by the government and had to move out sometime before 2022, so now also can’t take money from Russia despite living on donations and grants.
A couple others are Mediazona and Important Stories.
The original Novaya Gazeta also seems to be current and uncensored, even though they previously stopped in 2022 and apparently work from Russia according to the site’s footer. Dunno anything about that.
Those eyes have seen some nasty shit.
InB4 someone talks about how big her balls are
Cool lady tho, thanks for the post
Toby from The West Wing would find this strange.
I don’t wish to make too many tangential top-level comments, so I am declaring this the tangential thread, but all I can think of is that America is on a path where someday we’ll also have journalists who will literally have to choose between the truth and their own safety. We already have so many who choose lies over the truth when their safety is not questioned.
We have most of them picking job security vs. asking the hard questions, and when a few do ask something beyond what’s expected from the officials we call them “brave”. All of them should be doing this.
Some of them from some networks are playing the game because they profit from it, which is a problem as well.
This community is all spam now.
Trollish fuck, I’ve read your comment history, u r as bad as anything being posted. Trumper fuck
Where’d you get that from? Fuck Trump, and fuck Putin too. I don’t oppose at all what this lady is doing, this kind of post is just not what YSK is for.
I get what you mean but I really don’t mind this post. I didn’t know her, and now I do, and I think that’s cool.
Fair enough, even if that’s not really YSK’s purpose. Thank you for not immediately jumping to hostility like the other three responders.
found the Russian troll!
I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion. Do you think I’m saying I oppose Kostyuchenko’s work?
YSK is for useful information, not random facts prefixed with “YSK that”.
then you should be more active in posting “useful information” instead of complaining.
Fair, but why call me a Russian troll?
well you conveniently edited your original comment, but you attacked the integrity of the post, not the content.
…I didn’t?
