Elena worked for Novaya Gazetta, the last independent newspaper in Russia.
She covered corruption, prison violence, gay rights and Chechnya.
This isn’t a job for the faint of heart. She has been stalked, arrested and beaten on many occasions. Her newsroom was harassed daily. In fact, 4 of her colleagues were murdered under her watch.
After the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper was shut down. She left Russia and moved to Eastern Ukraine. She started systematically documenting war crimes committed against Ukrainian civilians
https://femantiwar.org/en/interview-kostyuchenko/
She was forced to leave after Ukrainians warned her that Russian soldiers put a bounty on her head. (you can use english subtitles)
Then, a few weeks later, she was hospitalized.
Her food was poisoned in an attempt to kill her:
Elena miraculously survived and kept reporting.
She now teaches at Duke University in the US. When asked if she is afraid, she said the following:
Elena is one the bravest person I know.
When you think about it, people living in Western Democracies have no excuse. You can create a labor union in your company. You can run for office in your town. You can fight big corporations to reduce pollution.
In my life, whenever I lack strength to do the right thing, I always think about her.
I don’t wish to make too many tangential top-level comments, so I am declaring this the tangential thread, but all I can think of is that America is on a path where someday we’ll also have journalists who will literally have to choose between the truth and their own safety. We already have so many who choose lies over the truth when their safety is not questioned.
We have most of them picking job security vs. asking the hard questions, and when a few do ask something beyond what’s expected from the officials we call them “brave”. All of them should be doing this.
Some of them from some networks are playing the game because they profit from it, which is a problem as well.
Lots of journalists have come and gone that feared for their safety in the US. The only new thing about trump is how transparent all the corruption overreach and abuse of power has become.
Not just transparent. How aggressive and prevalent.
It has always been there, but it is much, much worse right now than any time in the last 50+ years.