Q & A with Roman Anin on Holding Putin to Account, Even in Exile

It didn’t take long for IStories to become one of the most prominent investigative news sites in Russia. In December 2020, only a few months after its founding, the outlet released a deep-dive into Vladimir Putin’s daughter and son-in-law.

“He, as a dictator, doesn’t like when people investigate the corruption within his family. And the story was very popular,” says Roman Anin, the 37-year-old investigative journalist and founder of Important Stories (or IStories, for short).

Anin asked various sources inside the country whether it would be safe for him to return. Every one of them told him that he would most likely be arrested upon crossing the border — and he has not been back since.

The story started racking up views on YouTube (see video below), drawing so much attention that the Russian journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov warned Anin that it would bring trouble.

Four months later, police raided both Anin’s home and IStories’ Moscow offices. Anin says that officers seized all of the documents and digital devices in his home, including those of his girlfriend. While the Moscow newsroom had fortunately been empty, he describes the experience as the most stressful of his life. (Undaunted, Anin took the perilous experience and turned it into a teachable moment by creating a GIJN tipsheet for other journalists on what to do when authorities raid your home.)

He expected that he would be arrested for investigating the family of Russia’s president — “I was thinking that they would accuse me of being an enemy of the state,” he says — but an agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB) informed him that the raid was related to an investigation published years earlier. That story, which Anin worked on at the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, homed in on a luxurious yacht belonging to the head of the state-owned company Rosneft.

Two police interrogations followed, during which Anin was questioned about the yacht article. But the journalist remains convinced that the investigation into Putin’s family prompted his persecution. “This is a very typical modus operandi of Russian secret services,” he tells GIJN. “When they need to throw somebody in jail, or start a criminal case against somebody, they can use any pretext.”

When Vacation Becomes Permanent Exile

Anin left Russia soon after, on holiday. While away, Anin asked various sources inside the country whether it would be safe for him to return. Every one of them told him that he would most likely be arrested upon crossing the border — and he has not been back since.

“It was a psychologically difficult decision because my team was still in Russia and I was outside,” he recalls. “While my colleagues were risking their freedom and their lives, I was safe.”

But the challenges to IStories continued to mount, and Anin sensed that it would soon become impossible to do investigative journalism inside Russia. “I didn’t know that we would face the invasion of Ukraine,” Anin, who was born and raised in Moldova, says. “But it was already obvious that in Russia you faced one of two choices: either end up in jail, or accept to work in exile. This is exactly what has happened.”

IStories has managed to intensely cover the war in Ukraine as well as continue to report on other areas of Russian life.

For years, IStories, like other independent news outlets, was legally obligated to carry the loaded words “foreign agents” on its website. Then, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched a major assault on its western neighbor, which has since killed or wounded one million Ukrainians and Russians, per one recent estimate. Moscow swiftly followed its invasion with a crackdown on independent media. On March 5 of that year, the state designated IStories “undesirable,” a decision that criminalized its operations and barred the organization from working in the country. It was the most drastic step taken against the organization, and meant the threat of a lengthy prison sentence for any one of its journalists as well as for anyone who reposts or likes its output on social media.

By March 10, 2022, more than 150 journalists had fled Russia, according to Amnesty International. Among them were all of IStories’ reporters.

A Full Newsroom Diaspora

Anin’s early exile allowed him to prepare the ground for his team’s eventual escape, and he made sure staff had long-term visas. A week before the full-scale attack on Ukraine, a source informed him of the Kremlin’s plans. At first, he did not believe it would happen, but as he saw every step that had been described to him come to pass, he realized that IStories would indeed have to urgently relocate. His colleagues crossed into Latvia within days of the invasion, he says, and now work in exile in an undisclosed location. They continue to investigate from afar, even as Russia has both targeted independent journalism and intensified its propaganda through state media.

“I’d love to tell only stories about the war, because nothing is more important today… But I’d say Russians don’t care that much about the suffering of Ukrainians. We have to be creative in order to reach this audience. We need to find stories that are closer to Russians.” — Roman Anin

“The country is becoming very closed, and people are afraid to talk,” Anin says. Still, IStories has managed to intensely cover the war in Ukraine as well as continue to report on other areas of Russian life.

A video story about the families of Russian soldiers from the eastern Siberian region of Buryatia killed in the war was viewed by more than 10 million people. According to Anin, YouTube statistics show that 90% of viewers live in that region – 800,000 in Irkutsk alone. “That means that 30% of one of the major cities in Siberia watched this story,” Anin points out.

Another report, about severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among returning Russian soldiers, was seen by more than 10 million people, Anin says, 500,000 of them in Krasnodar, a major urban area in the south. “Half of the city watched this video that tells that war is a horrible crime and that people who take part in it come back either wounded or suffering from severe PTSD,” he explains.

The news outlet’s YouTube channel boasts more than 700,000 subscribers. More than 100,000 follow it on Telegram, and roughly 75,000 more on Instagram. Though blocked in Russia, IStories’ website can still be consulted by Russians via a VPN or mirror sites.

Balancing the Investigative Focus

But editorial decisions are not always simple: “I’d love to tell only stories about the war, because nothing is more important today,” Anin says. “But I’d say Russians don’t care that much about the suffering of Ukrainians. We have to be creative in order to reach this audience. We need to find stories that are closer to Russians.”

“As journalists, sometimes we believe that we can change the world for the better… When that doesn’t happen, it’s frustrating, but our job is also to save the history.” — Roman Anin

Despite the polls seeming to show overwhelming popular support for Putin, in a heavily censored domestic media landscape many ordinary Russians have turned to IStories for critical coverage, and in some ways IStories has never had more impact. Anin recalls that, before February 2022, his outlet’s reports prompted frustratingly little reaction from the government. Since the team has gone into exile, however, some of the coverage has led to promises of change.

Earlier this year, IStories published a story about a village where many live without  an official water supply. After the investigation came out, regional authorities promised local residents there that they would build a water supply pipe.

“I understand why,” Anin says. “It was humiliating that journalists proclaimed to be enemies of the state reported about problems affecting normal people. The authorities wanted to show that they care about those people as well, which is of course not true.”

Likewise, IStories published an investigation into houses in Karelia, a region on the border with Finland. There, his team found that hundreds of thousands of people live in old barracks without water supply or other services. The report led local authorities to promise that they would provide better housing.

“I don’t know if it happened, but that was an immediate reaction,” Anin says. “Again, it was really funny because they had to admit the problem, but simultaneously they said that the story was published by journalists who are NATO allies and it was all an attempt to destabilize the country.”

Documenting the Record, for Future Accountability

Even when IStories’ investigations do not seem to make a difference, Anin believes they are still worth telling. “As journalists, sometimes we believe that we can change the world for the better,” he says. “When that doesn’t happen, it’s frustrating, but our job is also to save the history. The work is important in trying to keep a record of what’s going on today, trying to document all the crimes committed.”

The team has received anonymous threats, which Anin suspects originated with the Russian authorities, since they contained detailed information about journalists’ movements, like seat numbers for their flights.

Some of IStories’ reporting is already being used in investigations by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and by Ukrainian prosecutors, he says.

“It’s going to be really important in the future, especially in the long run, when new generations of Russians, hopefully, will have a chance to change their country,” Anin continues. Though he is optimistic that better times will come eventually, he sees little hope of significant change so long as the current regime remains. “Nothing’s going to change until Putin leaves power,” he says.

And even abroad, there is an uneasy sense of jeopardy. The team has received anonymous threats, which Anin suspects originated with the Russian authorities, since they contained detailed information about journalists’ movements, like seat numbers for their flights. And in June, Russia issued an arrest warrant for Anin and a former IStories colleague, Ekaterina Fomina. He warns that any foreign journalist who goes to Russia risks being “arrested and used as a valuable exchange currency.”

But like others, he fears the wrath of the president may play out outside of the courts. “I believe that the major threats – for me and other independent journalists – are not legal. The threats are physical. We all know that Putin just kills his enemies. He doesn’t care where, and when.”

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Olivier Holmey is a French-British journalist living in London. He is a frequent contributor to The Times, Private Eye, Jeune Afrique and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Formerly chief correspondent, Middle East and Africa, at the monthly financial magazine Euromoney, he now works as an investigative reporter, obituarist, translator, and editor.