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During my 10 years as a Moscow-based journalist, I struggled to imagine how and when I would eventually leave Russia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Half Russian myself, I had moved there in 2013, keen to learn more and report on a country that I felt was often misunderstood by many in the West.<\/p>\n
In the end, the decision was made for me last month when a representative of Russia\u2019s foreign ministry called to tell me that my visa would not be renewed and I had six days to leave.<\/p>\n
The decision, I was told, had been taken by the \u201crelevant authorities,\u201d a term widely used to refer to the security services.<\/p>\n
After POLITICO published a news story<\/a> on my expulsion, I received a message from a fellow journalist wishing me luck.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same thing happened to me,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n In the days since, other colleagues have shared their stories about their de facto expulsions from Russia. Most have deep ties to Russia and speak the language fluently.<\/p>\n Taken together, their cases illustrate a worrying trend: Journalists from Western countries are slowly being squeezed out of Russia, as the Kremlin cracks down on the last few independent voices covering the domestic impact of the war in Ukraine ahead of a presidential election next year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a way of setting the tone,\u201d Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told me.<\/p>\n \u201cOtherwise the Western press corps might think they are free to do as they please. The point is to have them ponder every phrase, weigh their every word.\u201d<\/p>\n As Russian tanks lined up on the road to Kyiv in February 2022, back home the Kremlin was launching a second assault: on the country\u2019s independent media.<\/p>\n First, government censor Roskomnadzor blocked online access to the handful of critical outlets still operating.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, new laws were passed, effectively banning the word \u201cwar\u201d and introducing a penalty of up to 15 years in prison for the dissemination of information that called into question the official narrative on what Russia calls the \u201cspecial military operation.\u201d<\/p>\n Russian journalists took their cue and fled the country en masse. Concerned by rumors the authorities were about to impose martial law and close the border, many of their foreign colleagues followed suit.<\/p>\n As weeks and months passed, however, many of the latter gradually returned.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Russian citizens were being prosecuted under the new censorship laws, \u201cit seemed then that we weren\u2019t going to be sent to jail [for our reporting],\u201d Arja Paananen, a correspondent for the Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, told me in a phone conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n This fit within a long tradition of foreign journalists being spared from domestic repression.<\/p>\n In the years before the war, the ticket to that special status came in the form of an accreditation issued by Russia\u2019s foreign ministry, for which journalists were required to reapply once a year in order to then secure a visa.<\/p>\n As relations between Russia and the West took a nosedive following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the paperwork increased. Starting in 2022, for example, Russia introduced mandatory health checks for foreigners, involving fingerprinting, a chest X-ray and a session with a psychiatrist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some journalists began to be told to submit samples of their work along with their request to renew their accreditation.<\/p>\n But the extra red tape was largely viewed as a harmless, albeit cumbersome, formality.<\/p>\n It therefore came as a shock when in summer 2021, the longtime BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford was told upon returning from a reporting trip in Belarus that she had been designated a \u201csecurity threat\u201d and was being barred from Russia for life<\/a>.<\/p>\n Officially, her de facto expulsion was described as an answer to the two-year-old case of an employee of the Russian state news agency, TASS, who had reportedly been denied leave to stay in the U.K.\u00a0<\/p>\n Several months later a Dutch journalist<\/a> was ousted, this time over two old administrative offenses.<\/p>\n Still, the two expulsions appeared to be anomalies rather than bellwethers of a mass purge, and the general assumption that the Kremlin paid little heed to non-Russian media coverage remained largely intact.<\/p>\n Only in March this year was that belief finally quashed, when Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested<\/a> on espionage charges in a case unprecedented since the Cold War. His detention was, as Paananen put it, \u201ca warning sign to all correspondents.\u201d<\/p>\n The news sparked a second exodus of Western journalists. But dozens, the majority of them citizens of European countries, stayed behind, even as they faced harsher restrictions and growing uncertainty.<\/p>\n Since the war, for citizens of what the Kremlin calls \u201cunfriendly countries\u201d (those which have imposed sanctions on Russia), the accreditation cycle has been shortened to three months.\u00a0<\/p>\n The foreign ministry never formalized or explained the change. But during a press conference in February, roughly a month before Gershkovich\u2019s arrest, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova \u0430nnounced the end<\/a> of what she called the old \u201cregime of maximum favorable treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all over now,\u201d she said. Foreign journalists \u201care going to live their lives and get their documents in a new way: the way it\u2019s supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that journalists would not be allowed to work in Russia if they \u201ctreat us, our country, our people boorishly and disparagingly.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked for comment, the foreign ministry said its decisions to exclude foreign correspondents were a reaction to the \u201creal terror\u201d being waged against Russian journalists in the West.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the context of the harassment of the Russian media unleashed by the West, it was decided to respond by changing our policy towards journalists from unfriendly countries and introducing pinpoint restrictive measures,\u201d the ministry said in an email to POLITICO.<\/p>\n In practice, the three-month review appears to have been used as a way to filter out some journalists \u2014 while keeping others on their toes.<\/p>\n Often, a negative decision is not made explicit or formalized, but is communicated to the journalist through an intermediary and presented as a temporary, procedural issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once they have left Russia, the person is left in limbo only to conclude months later that they, in fact, have been expelled.\u00a0<\/p>\n In my initial conversation with the foreign ministry, I was told that according to \u201cinternational law,\u201d I would not get an explanation or reason for the refusal. But after my ousting received broad media coverage, Zakharova in a statement volunteered several<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among my transgressions were that I had been away from Russia for a large part of 2022, during which I had not published enough articles for my employer. But the main argument was geopolitical: In light of the \u201cbullying\u201d of Russian media and journalists by the EU, there \u201cshould not be any questions\u201d about the visa problems of a Dutch citizen.<\/p>\n Others have been given different reasons for their expulsions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most Moscow-based correspondents have a remit covering the entire former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. As a result, Russia\u2019s full-scale assault on its southern neighbor caught many on the opposite side of the front line.<\/p>\n The Russian authorities never stated openly that they expected journalists to pick a side. But how long they stayed in Ukraine after the invasion, and whether they have continued to report from there, appears to have become an unofficial test of loyalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n Luzia Tschirky, a correspondent with the Swiss public broadcaster SRF News, was among journalists woken by explosions in Kyiv on the first day of the war. Part of a small team, she stayed on to cover the invasion\u2019s immediate aftermath.\u00a0<\/p>\n In May of last year, she returned to Moscow only to face the displeasure of her handler at the foreign ministry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was told that I had not come back fast enough after the \u2018special military operation,\u2019 and that others had returned sooner,\u201d she told me in a phone conversation.<\/p>\n She had lost her status as a permanent correspondent and would need to reapply as a special correspondent. While that was being processed, she would have to leave Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n When she asked for a timeframe she was told that: \u201cthese days that is decided on an individual basis, and differs from person to person.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, Tschirky, who had been based in Moscow since late 2018 and is a fluent Russian speaker, has resubmitted her paperwork four times: never getting a clear refusal, never getting a green light. \u201cI just got the same answer over and over again: It\u2019s being processed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n When her name disappeared this summer from the ministry\u2019s online list of accredited bureau chiefs she saw it as a bad sign but decided to stay quiet.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the Swiss way of hoping that something would change and a miracle would happen,\u201d she said. \u201cCompared to other countries, normally Swiss journalists are the last ones to get into trouble.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Another journalist, who requested anonymity to speak freely, recalled being summoned by a Russian official for a \u201ccomradely\u201d meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tone was jokey, friendly, theatrical at times,\u201d the journalist told me.<\/p>\n During what the journalist compared to an \u201cagitprop lecture,\u201d the official argued that any inconveniences faced by European journalists in Russia simply mirrored those experienced by Russians in Europe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe person insisted that it has nothing <\/em>to do with what we write about Russia, and that the authorities would never<\/em> get involved in editorial stuff.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But then the journalist was asked why, if they regularly traveled to Ukraine, they even needed Russian accreditation. Considering their absences, one could suspect the journalist of being a spy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could have been a threat, maybe not, you never know in these talks,\u201d the journalist told me. \u201cThe person was smiling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u0410lthough they did eventually get their documents, they are no longer in Russia. \u201cI definitely felt unsafe,\u201d the journalist said. \u201cIt\u2019s not worth the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of one French journalist, their employment status became the reason for their ousting.<\/p>\n Formally, a journalist can only obtain accreditation on behalf of a single publication, and only staff journalists are allowed to work in Russia. But for years the Russian authorities have tacitly accepted the reality of a media industry in which freelance journalists have to work for several publications at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n The French journalist, who asked not to be named, worked for several media outlets from Moscow for more than four years. A few months after the full-scale invasion, they moved away from Russia, but frequently traveled back and forth.<\/p>\n Five days before their accreditation was due to expire this summer their foreign ministry handler called and, in a conversation eerily similar to mine, told them that the Federal Migration Service had refused to issue a visa. No further explanation would be given, the handler said, in accordance with \u201cinternational law.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, another person from the foreign ministry, whom the journalist described as \u201cwell informed,\u201d said it was because they had not written enough for the specific medium they had been accredited for.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told I could try to reapply, but that it would be \u2018very difficult,\u2019\u201d the French journalist said. \u201cI understood then that the decision was final.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of those who spoke to me suspected that a specific report acted as a trigger for their ousting.<\/p>\n In July 2022, Paananen, the Finnish journalist, wrote an opinion piece<\/a> where she accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of displaying \u201cthe doublethink of an autocratic leader in the style of George Orwell\u2019s novel 1984.\u201d<\/p>\n The foreign ministry slammed the piece in an online riposte<\/a> as \u201ca blatant example of anti-Russian propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n Two months later, in October, for the first time since 1990 when she first started covering what was then still the Soviet Union, she was told her accreditation papers were not yet ready.\u00a0<\/p>\n From Finland, she kept contacting her handler at the ministry who gave her the same polite answer: \u201cShe understood that it was a massive inconvenience for me, but kept telling me that she was still waiting for the right signatures from the \u2018bosses\u2019 who\u2019d been very busy and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n Leaving open the possibility it had been a mistake or delay, she waited until February this year to say openly that she\u2019d been expelled.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey never gave me an official explanation, but they don\u2019t have to: They\u2019re starting to prevent foreign journalists from working here, but are doing it in a soft way,\u201d said Paananen.<\/p>\n A similar story played out in the case of another Finnish correspondent, Anna-Lena Laur\u00e9n, whose ties to Russia go back to 2006. She and her 13-year-old daughter left in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, but returned to St. Petersburg several weeks later.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>I told my daughter: We can plan ahead three months at a time, but be prepared we might have to leave again,\u201d Laur\u00e9n said.<\/p>\n When she applied to have her accreditation renewed in May, she was told by the foreign ministry to \u201c\u2018be careful with what you write,\u2019\u201d she told me. \u201cIt was practically a threat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the warning, she continued traveling to, and reporting from, Ukraine, bracing for trouble in Moscow. \u201cBut nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n Things changed after she published an article<\/a> on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in April in the Swedish-language newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, \u201cabout how he used to be respected, but now he\u2019s a persona non grata. You know, the story everyone has written at some point.\u201d<\/p>\nThe home front<\/h3>\n
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\u2018It\u2019s all over now\u2019<\/h3>\n
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Caught out<\/h3>\n
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Agitprop lecture<\/h3>\n
Freelance dilemma<\/h3>\n
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No official explanation<\/h3>\n
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