Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov attends an event before auctioning his Nobel Peace Prize medal in New York, on June 20, 2022.KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images
Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov is not terribly interested in answering questions about his personal safety during a video call from Moscow, where he remains despite the Kremlin’s persecution of public dissent over its war on Ukraine.
The former editor-in-chief of prodemocracy newspaper Novaya Gazeta prefers to redirect the conversation to compatriots who have been killed or jailed for their anti-war positions.
Mr. Muratov, who is visiting Toronto this week to deliver the keynote speech at a Journalists for Human Rights fundraiser gala Oct. 1, takes advantage of a pause in the conversation to press home his point.
He holds up haunting before-and-after photos of ordinary Russians, including those whose lives have been destroyed or disrupted after they objected to Moscow’s all-out assault on Ukraine that began in February, 2022.
There’s concert pianist Pavel Kushnir, before he was imprisoned after posting anti-war videos, performing before an audience. The second photo shows him lying in his coffin after a hunger strike in jail cut short his life.
There’s Alexei Gorinov, the geophysicist-turned municipal politician who was jailed for seven years after he asked why council was discussing a children’s art competition when there were “children dying every day” in Ukraine. The second photo shows a dramatically changed Mr. Gorinov, with a grey pallor to his skin, behind bars. “This is how he looks today,” Mr. Muratov said.
These are the people he wants Canadians to be concerned about – those jailed or killed for objecting to what is happening in Ukraine. Not him.
“That’s what I’m most interested in right now,” he said. “And that’s what I’m going to talk about: the fate of political prisoners.”
Novaya Gazeta itself has come under heavy repression from Moscow but continues to operate in Russia despite this. Its current editor-in-chief was detained, accused of discrediting the army and fined, and the paper regularly pays huge financial penalties under military censorship laws. Its crowdfunding platform has been blocked by the Russian government.
In 2022, the Kremlin criminalized the use of the word “war” in connection with its invasion of Ukraine. As such, Mr. Muratov and all Russians are forced to refer to it as a “special military operation.”
Mr. Muratov said people in the international community should urge a swap that would see Russia release its political prisoners in exchange for Russian collaborators held by the Ukraine government. He estimates that there are about 700 political prisoners in Russia now.
The journalist, who turns 63 at the end of October, has been targeted for his work. Last September, the Kremlin branded him a “foreign agent,” a label used to mark critics of the government that has been applied to more than 100 journalists. That same month, he stepped down as Novaya Gazeta’s chief editor.
In 2022, a man assaulted him on a train, pouring red paint containing the solvent acetone over the journalist, an attack U.S. intelligence reportedly believes was organized by Russian intelligence services. No criminal case has yet been opened in Russia against his attackers.
Some former Novaya Gazeta journalists who emigrated in 2022 to Riga, Latvia, have opened their own independent publication called Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Asked how long he believes Russia’s assault on Ukraine will last, Mr. Muratov said Moscow will pay people to fight “until they have no money left, or no people left.” And, he said, “Russia still has money.”
Polling by the Moscow-based Levada Center show that support for war among the Russian population remains high but Mr. Muratov cautions against trusting surveys because a significant number refuse to respond. “People are afraid to answer.”
He said people under 50 generally don’t support Moscow’s actions in Ukraine. Mr. Muratov said backing for the conflict, and support for Mr. Putin, tends to come from older Russians – those who remember the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that Russia once dominated but was dissolved in late 1991.
Mr. Muratov said those who fight for Russia in Ukraine are doing it primarily for money because Moscow has vastly increased the pay rates tenfold for soldiers.
He noted reported estimates that the number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or injured in the conflict would be 1 million by the end of this year. Mr. Muratov called it “an unbelievable tragedy for 21st century.”
Mr. Muratov said most Russians, regrettably, don’t care about the conflict and Kremlin-controlled TV propaganda and social media has demonized Ukraine and Ukrainians to justify Moscow’s actions. “Propaganda is extremely influential, and for lots of people, it does work this way.”
A Ukrainian offensive in August that enabled Kyiv to seize Russian territory in the Kursk oblast has punctured that propaganda, but only for those living in that area. “The majority of the Russian population is indifferent to what is happening to the residents of the Kursk region,” he said.
Russian TV tells the population “everything is great and the Ukrainians will be pushed back from Kursk.”
Russian internet censors make it hard to reach the outside world and Mr. Muratov is upset that Apple has reportedly removed software from its Russian application store that had enabled Russians to set up virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent restrictions and reach hundreds of websites blocked by Moscow. Barred sites include Western news-media websites as well as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Apple, it seemed, has succumbed to Kremlin’s demands, he said.
Free speech for Russians will now depend on the ingenuity of software engineers who can figure how to get around Moscow’s firewalls, Mr. Muratov said.
The Russian journalist no longer has the Nobel Prize medal he won in 2021 (he shared the prize with Filipina editor Maria Ressa). He auctioned off his medal for US$103.5-million and donated the money to UNICEF to help Ukrainian child refugees affected by Russia’s invasion, a decision made by the editorial team at Novaya Gazeta.
“All I was thinking about was how to help,” he said.