What is Meduza, the independent news outlet that Russia has outlawed?

Russia began cracking down on news outlets after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Last year, it passed a law prescribing jail terms of up to five years for “discrediting” the armed forces and criticising the country’s decision of going to war.

Reuters reported that more than 50 other organisations are also on the “undesirable” list. These include Russian investigative news outlets iStories and Proekt, and the Netherlands-based Bellingcat.

Who are Meduza?

Meduza was established in 2014 in Latvia by Russian journalist Galina Timchenko, who was fired from her job as chief editor at Lenta.ru, a popular Russian-language online newspaper. Timchenko’s sacking came right after she published an interview with a member of Right Sector, a far-right Ukrainian nationalist group.

In an interview to Fobes, she said that the decision to set up her news outlet in Latvia was made because “it is possible to establish an independent publishing house in Latvia, while in Russia it is impossible”. Several former journalists from Lenta.ru joined Timchenko’s new organisation, and it quickly became the largest Russian independent news site.

Meduza’s troubles began in 2021 after the Russian authorities put the news outlet on a list of “foreign agents”. The decision stripped it of local advertisers and forced the organisation to raise money through crowdfunding.

Things worsened last year, when Meduza, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, published an editorial condemning Moscow’s move. The website was blocked in the country and accused of “systematic dissemination of fakes”.

Russia’s crackdown

The government of President Vladimir Putin intensified action against independent news media after the war started. In May 2022, Russia passed a law against spreading “false information” about the invasion and blocked access to Facebook and major foreign news outlets.

The New York Times reported that Russian authorities had said that the banned outlets and social media platforms had engaged in “discrimination against Russian news media”. They also claimed that the “journalists writing critically about the war — or calling it a “war” or an “invasion” — were undermining the national interest, and called them traitors, the report said.

The websites of the Voice of America, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were earlier blocked.

A Financial Times report said that at least 133 people had faced criminal prosecution under this law. “Hundreds of journalists have fled Russia to avoid being prosecuted for the war and continued to report from afar in countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Georgia”, the report said.