“Blame the Russian Federation for my death”: the tragedy of Irina Salvina.

The recent suicide of Russian journalist Irina Salvina was an act of defiance against her repeated convictions for “fake news”, shedding light on the repressive system of media control in the Russian Federation.

Source: Flickr

Irina Salvina was the editor-in-chief of Koza Press, an online news outlet based in Nizhny Novgorod, a city 400 km east of Moscow. Koza Press shines a light on Russian affairs and prides itself on the reporting of independent analytics and facts, without censorship. Salvina earned herself a reputation as a brave and outspoken journalist, reporting real and unfiltered news, in spite of the Kremlin’s efforts to suppress media freedom, and to personally suppress her publications. On October 2, Irina Salvina committed suicide by setting herself on fire outside the regional department of the interior ministry in Nizhny Novgorod. In a disturbing video which has since gone viral, she sits on a bench alight while a passer-by tried to put out the flames, she repeatedly pushes them away. In a Facebook post, published the day before she died, Salvina wrote: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.”  

In the early hours of October 1 , Salvina’s apartment was searched by the Investigative Committee and Russian special forces. In a Facebook post, she wrote that during the raid they confiscated flash drives, laptops, phones, and notebooks. Prior to the search, she had been listed as a witness in an ongoing case investigating the activities of Nizhny Novgorod’s Spaghetti Monster Church, run by Mikhail Losilevich. The Spaghetti Monster Church supposedly provided a space for Open Russia to conduct training courses, an accusation which has resulted in a criminal case with Losilevich arrested. Being listed as a witness is generally recognised as the precursor to prosecution, and possibly a prison sentence. According to her friends, Salvina’s supposed involvement with the case, and the inevitability, as she saw it, of paying a heavy price for such charges led her to the most violent act of protest.

In the investigation, Salvina was accused of being a part of Open Russia, an allegation she denied. Open Russia is an oppositional movement promoting democratic values in Russia, with strong ties to exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon now residing in London. The organisation was deemed undesirable and a security risk by the Kremlin, meaning that those alleged to have any involvement with the group, like Salvina, have found themselves on the wrong side of President Putin.

The journalist had been a focal point of Russian authorities for several years and was subject to a number of fines. In 2019 she was forced to pay 70,000 rubles (~£700) as a penalty for her Facebook post which condemned the installation of a memorial plaque honouring Stalin in the town of Shakhunya. More recently in July this year, according to Pravda, Salvina was fined 65,000 rubles (~£650) for an article about the director of an academy, who supposedly had contracted Covid-19 and continued to make contact with other people. This was deemed fake news, and she was penalised under part 9 of article 13.15 of Putin’s fake news law, a section denoting the “abuse of freedom of mass information”. According to her lawyer, this constant harassment by the authorities “put her on edge”, and ultimately led to her suicide. Her brutal act of self-immolation, a response to the investigation into Losilevich as the latest in a series of charges brought against her, signifies the impact on journalists of constant media restrictions imposed by Putin, and the staunch punishment for publishing content the Kremlin disapproves of.  

In 2019, the Kremlin legislated to outlaw the “disrespect” of authorities and the spreading of “fake news”. The vagueness of this policy meant that within seven months of its inception, prosecutors had filed 46 cases, most of them for insulting Putin. Moreover, under this law, multiple journalists and news providers have been fined for the supposed dissemination of fake news regarding the pandemic in Russia. Under the guise of allegedly spreading false information that posed a threat to human health, Echo Moscow radio station was fined 260,000 rubles (~£2,600) in June this year. The fine was issued due to the publication of content which casted doubt on the government’s official Covid-19 statistics. Another journalist who was penalised under this law, was Radio Free Europe journalist Tatyana Voltskaya. Volstskaya’s interview with an unnamed doctor discussed the possibility of a shortage of ventilation machines in Russia. This content allegedly violated the article which checks news providers for “abusing freedom of mass information”, the same article which was used in the case against Salvina in July. The increasingly intolerant stance of the government towards media freedom since 2000 has made genuine journalism a dangerous profession in Russia. Irina Salvina is yet another victim of Putin’s increasingly oppressive media laws, and intolerance of dissent.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 25 journalists have been murdered since 2000, when Putin came to power. Furthermore, a number of reporters and editors, like Salvina, have been subject to continuous harassment by authorities, from home searches to accusations of drug possession, according to the Freedom House’s 2020 report.

Irina Salvina’s death is a tragedy, and she was one among a community which is under constant attack by the Russian government. Her defiant act of protest further demonstrates the suffocating nature of the Putin regime, and its suppression of media freedom. The bench outside the regional department of the interior ministry in Nizhny Novgorod has been covered in flowers and photos to commemorate Irina Salvina. One poster reads; “journalist Irina Salvina, driven to suicide by fines and searches”. Her death has sent a message to the international community - hopefully it will listen and take action.

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