I will make this relatively short. This article from The Guardian tells the story. I will add a bit to explain what a huge deal this is.
www.theguardian.com/…
Two editors from the website Lenta.ru published 40 articles that they authored themselves which were each as truthful and as anti-war/anti-Putin as possible.
The articles had titles such as “Vladimir Putin lied about Russia’s plans in Ukraine”, “The Russian army turned out to be an army of thieves and looters” and “Russia abandons the dead bodies of its troops in Ukraine.”
I've written diaries here about my study of the Russian language over the past few years and I actually started using this website (lenta.ru) far before all of this as a learning source to help my progress in reading the Slavic alphabet and bolstering my vocabulary. I found it by looking for the most popular news sites in Russia.
Lenta sees more than 200 million visitors a month.
It was always pro-Putin but after the invasion happened it became an alternate reality. At first it almost didn't mention the "special operation" at all and then it quickly moved to radical fiction accounts of Ukrainians either losing badly on the whole, committing war crimes on their own people, etc, etc, etc.
I had to stop reading it. It made me mad and sad. I am connected to Ukraine via my partner and her family and I couldn't stomach it. The learning tool was gone.
Anyhow, my personal note aside. The actions of these two journalists inside Russia in my opinion go far, far, far beyond the action of the broadcaster who bravely jumped in front of the camera with a simple "нет войны" (No war) sign a few weeks back.
These stories were a deep and extremely pointed. Calling out Putin personally, calling out the disgusting actions of the army, on and on.
This was an act of radical bravery that is hard to imagine. People are getting locked up for standing with signs in public that have peace symbols or for wearing blue and yellow. These journalists dropped bomb after bomb of truth on possibly millions of readers (200mm/30 is over 6 million readers a day).
What it tells me is something I already know. I was planning to do a diary about bloggers and vloggers inside of Russia that I follow on a daily basis and I probably will but this story hit me over the head with it's massiveness. I still consume Russian content every day. My learning journey didn't stop - I just stopped being able to stomach the Propaganda machine. This content consumption points to the following - and yes, it's just an opinion -
I don't believe that the polling support numbers are real in Russia. Yes, without question the propagandized portion of the country is real and deeply invested in the story that Putin is selling. They also don't consume outside media. What portion is it? It's impossible to tell but I don't believe it's anywhere near the 70-80% that is often quoted.
This story gives me even more hope that the part of Russia that knows what is going on, who use VPN or simply have friends or family who get them the truth is bubbling very close below the surface and perhaps the dam will finally break and large scale protest will break out.
On the other hand, this story could just be about a single instance of brave. Let's hope it's the former, not the latter and change comes to Russia sooner than later.
— UPDATE FROM COMMENTS: Apparently the two journalists are not in Russia at this time. They had access to the content management system (now revoked) but were working from outside of Russia. My personal thought on this is that it makes it safer for sure but it’s still amazingly courageous. I honestly was shocked when I read it out of this context because it seemed so massive that they would deeply be in danger of life within Russia. Regardless that they are not in Russia though — it’s still an act that certainly put them in Putin’s scope.