Russia’s Isolation From the West Will Outlast the War

While I was researching Russian investigative journalism a little over a decade ago, several of the people I interviewed used variations of the same metaphor to explain why Vladimir Putin had not stamped out the country’s independent media: They said that critical outlets—and they specifically referred to Russia’s most well-known investigative publication, Novaya Gazeta—were like credentials for Putin, allowing Russia to masquerade as a democracy. “Someone might be imprisoned in Russia for their articles, but Novaya Gazeta will continue to exist and showcase to the outside world that we do have freedom of speech in Russia,” a senior Russian journalist told me.

Until very recently, that characterization still rang true. Although Russia tends to be grouped with China in discussions of threatening authoritarian trends, the two countries have had very different media environments. In contrast to China, where social media is and all news outlets are owned by the party-state (though the stake of the ownership can vary), in Russia, social media remains less censored, and the state tolerated privately owned media, such as .