The Role of Russian Investigative Journalism in Today’s Society

In this event, prominent Russian investigative journalist Roman Anin (iStories) will comment on the war in Ukraine, mobilisation in Russia, Kremlin’s elites and the importance of investigative journalism and free press for Russia. Roman has a unique perspective into the mindset of Putin through a series of investigations.

Roman has a unique understanding of Putin’s mindset due to his award-winning investigation of Putin’s daughters. We will start from there and try to understand how it has influenced the Kremlin to start a full-scale war in Ukraine. Lana Pylaeva (Free Russia NL) and Jennifer Duin (Moscow Times) will talk with Anin about how this particular mindset has also made Putin’s elites disconnected from people in Russia and split the society. How the moods of the elites and people have changed during the last 8 months, how mobilisation has catalysed and deepened the misunderstanding in Russian society. And what role free press and investigative journalism play in all those processes. We will also discuss the possible role of crowd-sourced data by civil society in aiding journalist investigations of Putin’s cronies world-wide.

Over de sprekers

Roman Aleksandrovich Anin is a Russian investigative journalist. He is one of the founders of the independent Important Stories (IStories) outlet and a former journalist for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The main investigation in which he was involved, is the investigation of the Panama Papers. In 2021 he received a European Press Prize for his investigation about the life of one of Putin’s daughters.

Lana Pylaeva is a coordinator of Stichting FreeRussiaNL, a physicist by education she is interested to create a warm Russian-speaking community in the Netherlands.

Jennifer Duin (moderator) is a student of Slavic languages and cultures and a graduate in Dutch language and communication at the University of Amsterdam. She works as personal assistant to Derk Sauer at The Moscow Times and as editorial assistant at Russian TV channel TV Rain/Dozhd who recently moved to Amsterdam. At the time, she was initiator and organiser of the programme series Ukraine and Russia: the imagination of a region here at SPUI25, which she started in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.