Alerts | Online intimidation or smear

Journalist from Buryatiya region leaves Russia after intimidation from pro-Kremlin group

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On 30 January 2023, journalist Carina Pronina said she left Russia after receiving information that police may come to search her home at an unspecified location in Russia’s Irkutsk or Buryatiya region. Pronina, who works for the regional independent online magazine Lyudi Baykala (“The People of the Baykal”) said that a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel with over one million followers wrote about her, accusing her of authoring “tendentious materials about the participation of [ethnic] Buryats in combat” in Ukraine. The Telegram channel also accused Pronina of not focusing enough attention on the so-called “[heroic] deeds of [Russian] fighters” in Ukraine, and instead publishing materials related to funerals of Russian soldiers in Buryatiya. Pronina added that she had already been briefly interrogated by police while reporting from such funerals in the past.

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