Russia is not Putin

The war that Putin is waging in Ukraine contains another front.

The Russian leader has decided to bomb several Ukrainian cities at the same time that he had finally annihilated the Russian independent media.

The war against journalism began a long time ago, and thousands of Russian journalists have been fighting fearlessly for freedom of expression during the last 22 years that the dignitary has been in power.

However, days ago almost all of Russia's free media outlets were shut down and their websites were blocked, thereby disrupting the work of journalists.

This has resulted in the beginning of an exodus of Russian journalists, artists, filmmakers, computer scientists and scientists who refuse, first of all, to identify themselves with the regime that is waging this bloody war and who deny that the massacres in Ukraine are carried out on your behalf.

Secondly, if they remain in Russia, their lives are in danger: the Russian Parliament has voted on new amendments to the Criminal Code that equate any protest against the war to a case of high treason, for which the accused could face up to 20 years. from prison

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The flow of refugees working in the Russian media is huge.

It constitutes a human catastrophe that could be compared to the tragedy that occurred after the 1917 revolution, when most educated Russians fled from the Bolsheviks.

Some of those who fled back then became world famous personalities and greatly contributed to the development of art and science throughout the world.

Those refugees were, for example, Nabokov, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova, Aind Rand, Bunin, Chagall, Kandinsky, and Sikorsky.

A short list of the unfortunates who lost everything in 1918. The tragedy that is taking place right now is exactly the same.

The exodus that Russia knows today could be compared to the mass emigration from Germany in the 1930s: those who did not agree with Hitler's policy fled the country.

Among them were Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Marlene Dietrich, Thomas Mann, and thousands of others.

Like their predecessors, today's Russian exiles leave their homeland devastated.

They have waged a long battle for freedom and democracy that they have just lost.

They are forced to leave their homes and properties.

Sometimes they abandon their families and are often disowned by their relatives, fathers, mothers, colleagues and neighbors: they are branded as traitors and deserters of this war.

They also lose their jobs and livelihoods, their favorite job that used to give their lives meaning.

And finally, they say goodbye to their dreams, to the Russia they aspired to and dreamed of.

They bid farewell to the future they had placed their trust in: a free and democratic Russia.

All of them consider that it is not forever, but it is evident that this situation will last.

But even in this situation, his ideas and hopes are with the Ukrainian people, who suffer in a much more cruel way, those who are fighting for their survival and freedom, who live under the bombs and are forced to resist Putin's aggression. .

Independent Russian journalists and Russian civil society in exile need the support of democratic countries like the United States and the member states of the European Union.

It is necessary to provide them with refugee status and access to resettlement facilities.

We ask the White House, the European Council and the European Commission to launch an ambitious reception plan so that these free Russian voices can keep their intellectual resistance alive, for the benefit of the future of their own country, as well as of the countries that give them shelter, as previous generations did.

We launch a vibrant appeal to democratic societies and leaders to face this historic moment: mobilize to welcome Russian journalists, as well as artists, filmmakers, computer scientists and scientists.

Mikhail Zigar

is the founder of the independent television channel Dozhd and

is secretary general of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

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