“Living in Fear: The Perilous Lives of Exiled Russian Journalists”

Russian journalists in exile live in constant fear. Deliberately distributed false reports about poisoning are intended to further unsettle them. A reconstruction

Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya Gazeta’s anti-Kremlin reporter, was a thorn in the side of the regime from the early years of Putin’s rule. She was poisoned in 2004 and shot in 2006 (Photo: Kathy de Witt/Eyevine/picturedesk.com)

SShe woke up at 5am with sharp pains and strange symptoms. On the flight home, the numbness in her body increased. After landing, she went to the emergency room. The first tests in the hospital were surprising: she was as fit as an astronaut. Alcohol could not be detected either. “That was a bit bizarre after a business trip to one of the beer capitals of the world,” writes Natalia Arno on Facebook.

Top fit and still struck by deafness? The Russian activist and her doctors had a terrible suspicion: had she been poisoned to silence them? In her hotel room “the smell of cheap perfume hung”. Two weeks after her return from a conference in Prague to her exile in the USA, Arno therefore has a warning ready: “It is important that I tell you this story. As far as I know, she is not the first to report possible poisoning of Russian journalists and activists who left the country. And it’s not the first time the maid has forgotten to close the door of a hotel room.”

As a matter of fact. The Kremlin’s poison kitchen has now achieved notoriety. Among the poisoned activists critical of Putin are important opposition figures such as Alexei Navalny, who would have died in a plane high above Russia in the summer of 2020 if the courageous pilot had not made an emergency landing. He survived, was cured in Berlin and arrested on re-entry into Russia. Navalny is now in a Russian penal camp, where he is being tortured with harsh prison conditions that could also kill him.