December 2021, a Moscow kitchen. It’s near New 12 months’s—a time when, in line with Soviet lore, miracles had been potential—however the dialog amongst three ladies is not any extra cheerful than the winter night time exterior.
“At 27, I’ve grow to be a really harmful individual for the state,” Irina Dolinina says. She is a journalist with the investigative media outlet that, amongst different issues, ran an exposé on one in every of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters and the fortune amassed by her once-husband.
“I’ve already buried colleagues,” Dolinina says. “I dwell my life not feeling protected wherever. … My colleagues get medicine planted on them. My colleagues get jailed as spies. My colleagues get murdered.”
Within the documentary My Undesirable Buddies: Half I – Final Air in Moscow, Russian American director Julia Loktev follows a gaggle of unbiased feminine journalists whose job is to inform the reality in a spot the place fact has been banned. In doing so, she presents an prolonged view of what it’s wish to be slowly strangled by an authoritarian state, the place each establishment is sharpened towards satisfying the grim urges of the person on the prime.
For the final 25 years, that man has been Putin. A former KGB lieutenant colonel, he’s obsessive about rooting out enemies, home and overseas alike. Media has all the time been on the prime of his record: Inside a yr of his first inauguration in 2000, Putin orchestrated the state takeover of NTV, Russia’s premier unbiased tv channel, and he hasn’t stopped since. Reporters who challenged him had been sidelined, satirical reveals mocking him pulled off the air, and editorial groups at important shops swapped for government-friendly ones.
The assault on media unfolded alongside a gradual squeeze on civil society, together with nongovernmental organizations, activists, and watchdogs. In 2012, within the wake of anti-Putin protests, the Russian parliament enacted a overseas agent legislation permitting the Ministry of Justice to designate Russians suspected of being beneath the affect of different international locations as overseas brokers.
The time period “overseas agent” itself is borrowed from the Stalin period, when authorities had been busy searching so-called enemy brokers, interventionists, and provocateurs. As resurrected by Putin’s regime, the designation initially focused NGOs that obtained overseas funding and engaged in vaguely outlined “political exercise.” Within the years that adopted, it prolonged to media organizations, then to people who dared to work in organizations that criticize the authorities.
The overseas agent legislation works in tandem with the “undesirable organizations” legislation handed in 2015, after Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the wave of Western sanctions that adopted. The legislation gave the Prosecutor Normal’s workplace and the Ministry of Justice authority to ban foreign-affiliated teams deemed a menace to Russia’s safety and was broadly seen as a option to minimize off U.S. and European funding for civil society. Putin has lengthy been involved about overseas cash fueling dissent. For example, he has famously accused the West of financing Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Maidan Revolution, which ousted a pro-Russian president.
Through the years, this worldview has been codified into legal guidelines that make targets out of dissenters of all stripes. My Undesirable Buddies focuses on a number of of them. It’s divided into 5 chapters of round an hour every; a second installment, Half II – Exile, is at present being edited. The movie follows these ladies designated as overseas brokers (a lot of whom labored for organizations that had been deemed undesirable) within the weeks earlier than and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It’s without delay a feminine odyssey, a historic report, and a tough have a look at an unraveling society on the sting of the abyss.
Dozhd reporters Irina Dolinina (left) and Ksenia Mironova, featured in My Undesirable Buddies, dwell in exile after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime took its persecution of journalists additional in 2022. Movie nonetheless from My Undesirable Buddies.
The younger ladies of My Undesirable Buddies are all related to the media outlet Dozhd, rendered as TV Rain in English. Conceived in 2008 on the finish of Putin’s second time period—when his departure nonetheless appeared potential and a progressive successor was anticipated—Dozhd launched because the “Optimistic Channel,” a tv station centered on way of life, tradition, and leisure programming, with politics just one a part of the combo. Its younger workers, witty presentation, and casual, Western-style studios shortly made it a platform for liberal reporters, politicians, and cultural figures.
As Russia grew extra authoritarian, Dozhd discovered itself reporting on abuses of energy and airing voices that rejected Putin’s anti-Western, revanchist ideology. The Kremlin observed. In January 2014, a month earlier than Russia’s seizure of Crimea, Dozhd was accused of insulting veterans after polling viewers on whether or not Leningrad, which suffered a chronic and lethal siege throughout World Struggle II, ought to have been surrendered to avoid wasting lives. In a matter of weeks, each cable and satellite tv for pc supplier dropped the station, regardless of its apologies.
Dozhd shifted its content material on-line. Whereas different shops misplaced independence by way of firings, license revocations, or pressured possession modifications, Dozhd remained autonomous and offered a uncommon counterpoint to state propaganda. The federal government retaliated with audits, heavy fines for so-called extremism, and advertiser boycotts, pushing the outlet to the brink of chapter. It survived, however its persistence made it extra susceptible to the overseas agent legislation, which by 2021 had was a blunt instrument of repression. On Aug. 20, 2021, lower than a month earlier than the parliamentary elections, Dozhd was formally branded as one.
A overseas agent has few rights and lots of obligations. Essentially the most seen of those obligations is to preface each public communication—from information stories to feedback on a good friend’s Instagram submit—with an all-caps disclosure, which the film’s topics name “the fuckery”: “THIS NEWS MEDIA/MATERIAL WAS CREATED AND/OR DISSEMINATED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND/OR A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT.” Failure to incorporate this disclosure may end up in heavy fines and, in some circumstances, legal prosecution.
For a person journalist, the designation quantities to skilled demise. Few media shops danger hiring somebody deemed a overseas agent, even in a backroom position, since they might be obliged to reveal the affiliation. A journalist can’t shed the label even when they go away journalism, until a authorities physique petitions for elimination.
Whereas they’re unable to work, these labeled as overseas brokers are saddled with bureaucratic obligations so onerous they quantity to a full-time job. As soon as added to the Ministry of Justice’s record, they’re required to register a authorized entity to adjust to authorities audits. This implies yearly submitting a number of 40-plus-page stories detailing each supply of revenue and matching every to bills. Misreport by a number of cents, and also you face legal prosecution.
That is the place Russia finds itself after greater than twenty years of Putin’s rule—a far cry from the delicate democracy of the Nineties I as soon as knew. Below such situations, you need to be fearless or a fanatic to persist in journalism.
After they had been declared overseas brokers, Churakova (left) and Sonya Groysman, seen within the movie, began a podcast known as Hey, You Are a International Agent. They labored at an investigative information outlet collectively earlier than it was shut down for being an “undesirable group.”Movie nonetheless from My Undesirable Buddies.
Loktev’s documentary drops us into this world with out orientation or clarification. It’s late 2021, with Dozhd nonetheless on the air however the impending disaster already palpable. The younger ladies of My Undesirable Buddies embody exactly the fanaticism and fearlessness that the second calls for: pushed, devoted to the reality, and braver than most males in a rustic that routinely designates ladies because the weak gender.
All had been on the prime of their professions after they had been branded overseas brokers; all refused to give up or be outlined by it. They confront their new actuality with defiance, humor, and a refusal of cynicism that elsewhere may appear naive. Within the bleak panorama of Putin’s Russia, that spirit is what makes the movie compelling. You wish to comply with these ladies—for 5 hours, or for all times.
It’s not tough to grow to be formally undesirable whereas working in Russian media. Anna Nemzer, a talk-show host at Dozhd who goes by the nickname Anya, has been branded a overseas agent. Sonya Groysman, a former editor, obtained the designation after working at a now-banned investigative outlet. The identical occurred to journalists Irina Dolinina and Alesya Marokhovskaya; Marokhovskaya can be queer, which makes her doubly undesirable and, as of 2023, when Russia’s Supreme Court docket banned the “worldwide LGBT motion,” formally an “extremist.”
Dozhd reporter Ksenia Mironova, who goes by Ksyusha, alternatively, may have been the proper mannequin for Putin’s so-called conventional values—engaged to be married at 23, with clear blue eyes and the delicate oval face of a Chekhov heroine—had been it not for the truth that, as of filming, her fiancé, fellow journalist Ivan Safronov, has been in a Moscow jail for months on treason costs. With no trial date and no proof, Ivan was barred from seeing or corresponding with anybody, together with Mironova.
One of many movie’s most chilling scenes reveals Mironova on the submit workplace, packing a field of snacks and heat garments for Safronov. Each she and the clerk carry out their roles with deadened normalcy. That is the face of evil and the picture of Russia: The sufferer doesn’t complain, the state’s proxy shouldn’t be ashamed; each perform the roles assigned to them, as a result of what else is there to do?
Within the waning days of 2021, the ambiance in Moscow, the place the primary three chapters unfold, is summed up by Nemzer: “It’s a wake. However a enjoyable one.” Each day is “a brand new low,” she says. Each day, “We [wake] up in a brand new nation.”
After being pressured out of Moscow’s heart, Dozhd discovered residence in a transformed manufacturing unit, with hip studios that seem like they might be in New York or London. The staffers make the perfect of their state of affairs, filming segments like a tune known as “My Finest Buddy is a International Agent” or staging a James Bond-esque photoshoot riffing on their agent designation.
However this levity is invariably edged with dread. On one in every of Dozhd’s studio units, a distinguished lawyer, herself deemed a overseas agent, likens the label to the yellow stars that Jews had been required to put on in Nazi Germany. The legislation is “a weapon aimed to exterminate civil society,” says one other visitor, human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina, who at 83 years outdated is a overseas agent 4 occasions over due to her work with completely different NGOs.
The digital camera follows its topics round Moscow as their private and non-private lives grow to be more and more intertwined. We enter the ladies’s kitchens, the place they bake birthday truffles for his or her associates; courtrooms the place they futilely problem their overseas agent labels; cafes the place they focus on their podcasts with different undesirables. They speak about Emily in Paris and police vans; their cats bear the names of exiled poets.
There’s camaraderie, refined irony, even adrenaline—however none of them can beat again actuality indefinitely. “We’re sitting round this pretty desk ingesting wine,” Groysman says, “however every of us … is pondering: ‘We’re all fucked.’”
A frequent subject of dialog is whether or not or when they need to all go away Russia. Most know they aren’t protected however select to remain and preserve working. Some have household they’ll’t or don’t wish to go away; Mironova, for one, fears that fleeing would solely verify the accusations about Safronov’s alleged spying and add years to his sentence. (In 2022, he was sentenced to 22 years in jail.) Others don’t have any visa and no cash. After which there’s the Russian perspective of “avos”—the ungrounded perception that issues will in some way work out.
When the ladies collect within the waning hours of 2021, there’s hope that the yr forward could also be completely different—with out Putin, or on the very least with out battle. It’s tough to observe in hindsight, realizing how improper they’re.
Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian American journalist for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who was arrested for failing to register as a overseas agent, attends a listening to on the Sovetski court docket in Kazan, Russia, on April 1, 2024.Alexander Nemenov/AFP by way of Getty Photos
On Feb. 24, 2022, with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin dispelled these hopes for good. Any aspirations for “the gorgeous Russia of the longer term,” as soon as a slogan of Alexei Navalny’s, had been buried beneath the rubble of bombed maternity wards and kindergartens.
“I don’t have a rustic anymore,” Nemzer says. I, a Russian American an ocean away that morning, felt precisely the identical.
If the movie’s first three chapters generally really feel drawn out, introducing many plotlines without delay, the final two chapters slip by in a single breath. Spanning the times and hours main as much as the invasion and the week of its aftermath, the ultimate act offers an arresting inside view of what it was like waking up in a rustic that in a single day turned from a celebrated victor over fascism right into a perpetuator of it.
Within the battle’s early days, Dozhd maintained its unbiased protection. Whereas state channels lauded the “particular army operation” to free Ukrainians from the “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis,” as Putin described Ukraine’s leaders, Dozhd confirmed footage of shell-shocked civilians hiding from Russian missiles in subway stations. It issued a uncommon on-air assertion condemning the battle: “Don’t be silent. Say no to battle.”
Because the movie paperwork, the street to Dozhd’s closure is moderately quick. Within the first 10 days of the battle, the Russian authorities repeatedly lie about not hanging civilian targets. They draft legal guidelines to ban reporting from sources not authorized by the protection ministry. On March 1, Russia’s media regulator blocks Dozhd’s web site due to its “extremist reporting.” After a tip about an impending raid by safety forces, the workers flee the studio. On March 3, Dozhd—as soon as the Optimistic Channel—suspends operations beneath strain from authorities over its fact-based protection.
As international locations shut their airspaces to Russian plane, those that disagree with Putin are actually trapped. “We’re locked up with a madman who has nuclear weapons,” Mironova says. There may be determined mapping out of escape routes and packing of luggage; looking for taxis that may shuttle dissenters into Europe, Georgia, Armenia; moms begging their daughters to depart, to watch out.
Loktev’s topics now dwell in Europe and the US. Some continued their investigative work from overseas, the place security has proved solely relative. Each Dolinina and Marokhovskaya, for instance, have been harassed and threatened in Prague. Dozhd, too, confronted turbulence. After briefly relaunching in Riga, the channel misplaced its broadcasting license over a controversial phase (the court docket’s resolution has lately been overturned) and needed to transfer once more, this time to Amsterdam, the place it stays at present.
These trials, nonetheless, will all the time be calibrated in opposition to the struggling of Ukrainians. The heroes of this movie are alive, rebuilding their lives. For tons of of 1000’s in Ukraine, there’s nothing left to rebuild.
Folks stroll by way of Crimson Sq. in Moscow on July 7, 2024.Sefa Karacan/Anadolu by way of Getty Photos
My Undesirable Buddies shouldn’t be a straightforward watch. Filmed on Loktev’s iPhone, the primary three chapters can generally really feel extra like uncooked archival footage, transcribed to little quick impact. That’s a deliberate alternative, in line with the movie’s press supplies, made to create a report of the world that “now not exists,” Loktev says within the opening scene. Loktev’s fascination with historical past is comprehensible, however sadly within the Russian context, this example shouldn’t be that distinctive: A paranoid ruler weaponizes a passive populace in opposition to “enemies,” a handful of dissenters however, most of whom will likely be eliminated with out hesitation.
This doesn’t cease the younger ladies on this documentary from agonizing over whether or not they may have achieved extra to stop the battle. “For 20 years a monster was rising in entrance of our eyes, whom all of us fed with our silence and our passivity,” Marokhovskaya says.
One may say that My Undesirable Buddies is a narrative of failed resistance—a warning to faltering democracies questioning whether or not one can “flip such an enormous nation into North Korea,” as Dolinina says. A look at at present’s Russia suffices. The braveness of the few was merely not sufficient to beat the acquiescence of the various.
