In the course of the 1996 Russian Presidential election campaign, Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party and challenger to the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, pledged: “we will take care of the country’s information security. It is necessary to set up effective public control over state TV and radio broadcasting.”
Those media bodies, evidently frightful of the threatened control, rallied behind Yeltsin to such a degree that their support was considered a threat to fair elections in Russia. Remarkably, despite Yeltsin’s virtually non-existent popularity, the media support propelled him to re-election in the second round in July.
At that time, Putin was Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department, before he became Deputy Chief of Staff to the President in early 1997. He, thus, clearly understood the power of the media.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Unfortunately, his accession marked the beginning of the end for any semblance of true press freedom in Russia – it is posited, as a result of his fear of the power of the media were it to turn against him.
Soon after becoming President (acting from 1999-2000, then formally elected in May 2000), Putin moved to bend the major TV channels to his will, defying Western expectations for Russia’s convergence and integration with the “West”.
2003 marked the beginning of the end for true press freedom in Russia. Boris Berezovsky – an oligarch now in exile in the U.K. – had his two channels, ORT and TV-6, wrested from his control; the latter was shut down. Vladimir Gusinsky – another oligarch who fell out with the Kremlin – had his channel, NTV, taken by the government, who installed a loyalist at its head. The government also implemented a ban on outlets campaigning for and against candidates – a clear violation of freedom of opinion and expression, cornerstones of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR).
Not only are the suppressions of such freedoms contrary to international law – including Article 19 of the UDHR, which enshrines the right to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media” - but in fact abrogate from the Russian Constitution, Article 29 of which bans censorship, and Article 1 of the Russian Law on the Media, which contains a similar provision.
THE WEST
It certainly appears as if, as Russia’s relationship with the West broke down as the early 2000s wore on, Putin became gradually more determined to ebb the flow of independent information in Russia. Violations of press freedoms have thus become particularly egregious in recent years, but this has been an ongoing theme for two decades.
As a result of the “Colour Revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan from 2003-05 – which brought relatively more pro-Western governments to power – which the Kremlin perceived as U.S.-instigated regime changes, Russia-Western relations deteriorated.
In 2006 came the most egregious instance of the violations of press freedom in Russia. Anna Politkovskaya, a tenacious journalist who had reported doggedly on Russia’s “Dirty War” from Chechnya, was murdered (coincidentally, or not, depending on who you ask, on Putin’s birthday).
Ominously, Ramzan Kadyrov, Head of the Chechen Republic – a close ally of Putin – has declared those who criticise the President as his “personal enemies”. Five Chechens were later sentenced for her death though, to this day, questions linger over who ordered the hit.
In 2009, the Human Rights Committee of the UN raised concerns about “the alarming incidence of threats, violent assaults and murders of journalists and human rights defenders, which has created a climate of fear a chilling effect on the media, including for those working in the North Caucasus [the region of which Russia in which Chechnya is found], and regrets the lack of effective measures taken to protect the right to life and security of these persons.”
More than a decade later, a spate of deaths of Kadyrov’s enemies in Europe have struck fear into Europe’s 100,000+ Chechen exiles; clearly, suppressions of dissent are spilling out of Russia’s borders, and remain unchecked to this day.
At least 22 journalists were murdered from 2000-2010. Some estimates climb as high as more than 150 journalists and media workers having been murdered from 2002-2012.
Russia-Western relations deteriorated further, and Putin no longer seemed to care an iota about even the pretence of a façade of democracy.
ENTRENCHMENT
The disdain for press freedoms permeates not just the Executive, but also the Judiciary and the Legislature.
In 2010, Mikhail Beketov, a journalist who wrote about corruption and accused his local mayor of “political terror”, was charged with libel and fined, after being beaten up so severely in 2008 that he had to have his leg and several fingers amputated. He can no longer talk.
Oleg Kashin – a journalist with Kommersant – was also battered that year. Regardless of who was directly responsible for the assault, as Forbes Russia argued: “whoever stands behind this crime, responsibility for it rests with the leaders of the state. It is with their consent or encouragement that the atmosphere of moral terror against dissidents has been created, censorship restored, civil control over the security service and the police removed and honest competition made impossible.”
As Putin returned to the Presidency in 2012 (after four years as Prime Minister from 2008), the same worrying patterns continued and worsened.
Once seemingly almost ad-hoc, violations soon became engrained.
The Prosecutor General was soon granted the power to directly order the media regulator to block information deemed to contain illegal content.
Contrary to the UN’s recommendations that judicial officials receive training regarding the safety of journalists, in Russia such officials actively violate their safety.
In December 2013, an executive order unexpectedly liquidated RIA Novosti – one of Russia’s most independent state-owned media outlets – and replaced it with “Russia Today”, now known simply as “RT”. “RT”, long considered a Russian propaganda outlet, is now registered as a foreign agent in America. It made it into the U.K. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee’s recent “Russia Report”; its mention was with reference to “serious distortions” of coverage by the Russian state.
That same year, “offending the feelings of religious believers” was introduced to the criminal code – though, of course, that does not stop the widespread persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.
Things escalated in 2014, as “Grani.ru” became the first online news publication to be blocked in Russia.
A 2014 law also mandated Russian news media outlets to reduce foreign ownership stakes to a maximum 20%, thus forcing international owners to sell their stakes to Kremlin loyalists. While this is not in itself necessarily a violation (after all, the U.S. has similar such laws), the words of the MP behind the legislation chill: “If you own mass media,” he said, “you can start changing minds and promote your ideas [sic] and people will start believing them.”
CRIMEA AND FURTHER DETERIORATION
Putin’s brazen annexation of Crimea also prompted worrying developments for press freedoms. In July that year, he increased the punishment for public calls for separatism, which now carried up to four years’ imprisonment – convenient, of course, since that chunk of Ukrainian territory was now technically, and illegally, a part of Russia.
All independent media outlets on the peninsula were shuttered, as the authorities claimed to be “combatting extremism”. As “Reporters Without Borders” has noted, Crimea (and Chechnya) have become “black holes”. These developments brazenly violate the Additional Protocols (1977) to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which allow, within the framework of applicable rules and procedures, media access and coverage, as appropriate, in situations of international and non-international armed conflict.
The international implications of such developments are clear: press freedoms are now not just violated in Russia, but also in areas of de facto Russian control, as in Crimea, and places subject to strong Russian influence, including in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, and Transnistria in Moldova.
Relatedly, less than a year later, Putin extended the law on state secrets, so that any information revealing Russian military casualties, regardless of whether they occurred during times of war of peace, would henceforth be classified. This has been a particularly handy tool in allowing the Russian authorities plausible deniability regarding the actions of the Wagner Group – a private military contractor – with links to a Kremlin-friendly businessman.
The group has operated, at arm’s length, in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and into Sub-Saharan Africa, including in the Central African Republic (CAR), as above, without strong oversight. In 2018, three Russian journalists investigating the Wagner Group’s activities in the CAR were murdered. The journalists had been funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a Kremlin critic who was arrested in 2003 and had his oil company, Yukos, wrested from him.
By the end of 2016, a law that required telecommunications and internet companies to retain the contents of all communications for six months had been passed, and LinkedIn blocked.
The picture has only worsened since.
THE AUTOCRATS’ PLAYBOOK
Vague laws, it is widely known, are a favourite recourse of autocrats and dictators. This is no different in Russia. Vague laws on extremism, for instance, allow the authorities a wide berth in cracking down on any organisation or activity that lacks official support.
One can even be fined and jailed for “disrespecting” state officials.
Further, in March 2019, Russian MPs approved a law to block “fake news” online, and to punish those who spread it. It is little wonder, then, that their nation ranked 149/180 worldwide for press freedom last year. That puts it below South Sudan, Palestine, and Venezuela.
In December, Putin signed legislation that would allow the government to designate journalists who work for outlets identified as foreign agents as foreign agents themselves. The connotations of that term are blatant, and it is clearly intended to cast such reporters and organisations as enemies of some form or another.
Unsurprisingly, as have many autocratic regimes across the world, Russia has exploited COVID-19 as an opportunity to further suppress press freedoms. Reporters from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have been accused of “spreading false news” after alleging that hospitals lacked sufficient supplies amid the pandemic.
Most recently, after the appointment of an editor with ties to the Kremlin at Vedomosti, senior journalists resigned. OpenDemocracy decried the fact that Russia’s media market had lost another reserve of high-quality journalism. This incident seemingly violates a 2012 Resolution adopted by the UN’s Human Rights Council, which called upon States to promote a safe and enabling environment for journalists to perform their work independently and without undue interference.
Given the aforementioned litany of abuses of freedom of expression and opinion, it is little wonder that Russia ranks so poorly on international indexes.
It ranked 11th, just below Bangladesh, in the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2019 Global Impunity Index as a result of the six outstanding unsolved killings of journalists in Russia, in spite of concerns voiced by the UN that attacks against journalists often occur with impunity.
PROSPECTS
Unlike in the early 2000s, when offences seemed ad-hoc and perhaps, in the case of Politkovskaya’s murder, the work of rogue elements, today, the violation of press freedoms is clearly government policy. This has developed to such an extent that Russia’s communications regulator – presumably supposed to protect such freedoms – is included in a list of the 20 “worst digital predators”. It has blocked nearly half a million websites without warning or regard for legal procedure.
Russia has repeatedly ignored the UN’s urges to do its utmost, as a member State, to prevent violence against journalists and media workers, and to ensure accountability through the conduct of impartial, speedy and effective investigations into such violence when it does occur.
The past 20 years, then, have seen the slow demise of press freedoms in Russia. Independent organisations have been shuttered, replaced by such gauche propaganda outlets as RT. As the COVID-19 crisis rumbles on, and as Putin looks set to extend his grip on power, it seems he has achieved what Zyuganov was never given the chance to.
Mitch is a final year History, Politics and Economics student at UCL. He has keen interests in issues related to the Former Soviet Union, as well as Central and Eastern Europe. He is a freelance contributor to multiple publications, including Oxford Business Group Reports.