A young Russian journalist could no longer put up with the lies and anti-Ukraine propaganda he’d wrote for the pro-Kremlin publication Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP), so he defiantly posted at least 10 anti-war articles on KP’s website Saturday evening. The articles were quickly deleted.
The journalist, 24-year-old Vladimir Romanenko, said that he posted the articles as a protest to mark the upcoming Feb. 24 anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In a statement to the independent Russian news outlet, Prodolzheniye Sleduyet (To Be Continued), Romanenko wrote:
I decided to time my statement to coincide with the beginning of the war: during my shift, I just uploaded to the site articles talking about the crimes of the Russian authorities and army in Ukraine. About the number of civilian victims. About how many people the Russian army has actually lost in this war, and how much money Putin is throwing at the war. I wrote them all myself, based on official data from Ukrainian authorities, Russian independent outlets, and Western media.
For me, a step like this is a leap into the abyss. I’m looking for some kind of work, I don’t have much savings left. But I see this as atonement. Ending up unemployed I think is fair payment for the fact that I lied.
I ask for the forgiveness of the people of Ukraine for participating in all this. My statement shows that even among those who write propaganda, there are people who oppose it. I expect employees of other pro-Kremlin media outlets will notice my actions.
The independent Russian news outlet Meduza, now operating out of Latvia, wrote about Romanenko’s protest. Here are the headlines of some of the stories he posted on KP’s main page:
- “Crimea is Ukraine. Russia must return the peninsula.”
- “Russia has become a victim of occupation by the Putin regime”
- “The Russian Federation committed crimes in Bucha, Izyum, and Hostomel”
- “Peace does not come because of Putin: Zelensky signed an order banning talks with Putin personally”
- “Torturing Navalny: how Russian prisons treat political prisoners”
Some of the articles began with this disclaimer: “This material is not approved by the editors of Komsomolskaya Pravda, it is aimed at exposing the lies of the Kremlin regime, headed by the bloody dictator Putin and his gang of cynical thieves among the authorities, who have committed genocide against the peaceful nation of Ukraine.”
Romanenko’s articles were removed from KP’s website within 10 minutes. But Romanenko copied the articles into an internet archive.
One of Romanenko’s articles, preserved via the Wayback Machine, headlined “Kremlin Nazis staged a genocide of Russians,” which not only accuses Putin of committing atrocities against Ukrainians, but also against his own soldiers by throwing them into the meat grinder with no regard for their lives.
The managing editor reportedly wrote to Romanenko: “Fuck it, fuck it. I treated you like a person, I didn’t expect this from you.” But Romanenko’s explanation of what led to his protest is well worth reading, because it offers an insight into what it’s like to work inside Putin’s media propaganda machine.
Romanenko describes himself as an aspiring journalist who took the job at Komsomolskaya Pravda in September because he couldn’t find a job. He needed money, even though work in propaganda didn’t appeal to him. He said that he opposed the war in Ukraine from the first day.
He said that like many of his colleagues, he was an independent contractor,with a fixed salary based on the number of stories published per month, and was able to work remotely.
When the mobilization was announced in late September, Romanenko decided to leave Russia because he felt “it would no longer be safe there,” even though the Ministry of Defense had announced that media workers wouldn’t be mobilized for military service.
Romanenko did not say which country he was living in. But from outside Russia, he was able to continue working remotely for KP, as other colleagues also did. But he said everyone wrote that they were in Russia.
Romanenko wrote:
Working in propaganda put pressure on me emotionally. Many people who work in such publications justify the killing of civilians in Ukraine. Conducting hypocritical dialogues with the team and writing lies every day is more difficult than it seems. After work, I had neither the strength nor the desire to just communicate with someone and do something.
[...]
The editorial office has a list of persons and topics that cannot be written about. It includes any activists, foreign agents. You cannot write about the participants in the resistance - not only Ukrainian, but also Russian.
Romanenko said he did his “best to counteract this propaganda as much as I could” to no avail, until he finally reached his breaking point and could no longer go on.