“I cannot come back to Russia, I risk being arrested and condemned for five years in prison.” Sonya Savina is a young journalist for Important Stories, a Russian independent media that investigates crimes perpetrated by Putin’s army in Ukraine. In 2021, she won the European Press Prize Investigative Reporting Award and in October she received The Lorenzo Natali Media Prize as best emerging journalist, thanks to her article about the massacres in Chernihiv. She tells the beginning of her career to the students of the Journalism Master at the Luiss University, in Rome. “I’ve always done investigative journalism, first for the RBK media and The Project, then for the Proekt outlet. I’ve also collaborated with the independent organisation Conflict Intelligence Team. Today, I investigate the mode of action of Russian troops during war.”
In 2020, Savina starts working for Important Stories, a new outlet founded by Roman Anin, the most important Russian investigative journalist. “Today the newsroom counts fifteen editors. Through the analysis of data we discover social problems that affects our country,” she explaines. In August 2021, IStories publishes the investigation into Kirill Shamalov, Putin’s daughter’s husband who became a billionaire a few days after the beginning of their relationship. The article has a large echo and is read by the President. The result is that the Minister for Justice declares Sonya and her colleagues ‘foreign agents.’ But their investigative activity does not stop and IStories moves to Prague, where it continues to shed light on war crimes of the Russian military in Ukraine.
The first investigation carried out by Sonya began by chance. “A Ukrainian woman told us that her phone had been confiscated by two soldiers who, before getting rid of it, took a selfie of themselves. Thanks to a face recognition app, we found their identities and we contacted them. The call lasted almost two hours and, after denying several times that they had killed civilians, one of them confessed that he had shot at the temple of a Ukrainian in a village near Kiev.” These findings cause some consequences to the soldier. “He stopped fighting, but now we cannot talk with him anymore,” Sonya continues “because he is accused of having given information to the enemy.”
Sonya Savina’s intervention goes on with the analysis of To Kidnap and Russify, an example of data journalism on the case of Ukrainian children deported to Russia. Nobody knows the precise number, but every year the Russian Ministry of Education publishes a report on the orphans present in the country. “We revealed a dramatic increase in numbers and many minors registered in the database are Ukrainians torn from their families. We counted at least two thousand of them, but there is some missing data…Putin has always denied everything, but data speaks clearly.”
The newsroom of IStories has been considered “undesirable” by the Russian government for two years. In March 2022, the media regulator Roskomnadzor blocked access to the IStories website in Russia. All its journalists have been exiled in Prague and some of them have received some threats. “I still have not received any,” Sonya says “but I am afraid for the safety of my family; they still live there…we can meet only in other countries. At the moment, it is not convenient for me to even get closer to my country’s border.” The lesson concludes with a glimmer of hope: “I do not know when this war is going to end, but I hope Ukraine will win.”
