When Russia was preparing to annex Crimea in the late winter of 2014, the newly-appointed head of the Russian agency that published our newspaper, the Moscow News, laid down some new rules. The age of disinterested, objective reporting was over. Our job, this Kremlin-picked patriotic zealot told staff, was to love the Motherland.
We all resigned. As a journalist, striving for disinterested objectivity was literally my job description – the values instilled in me when I trained in New York. Praising your Motherland for money can be called all sorts of things, just not love.
Instead, I went on to report on the start of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine for Western publications, and watched in dismay as the Kremlin began its crackdown on independent media. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, I left the country.
Dozhd immediately fired Korostelev, but this was not enough
But today, eight years later, the Kremlin firebrand’s words are proving prophetic, not just in Russia, but more than ever in Western democracies.
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