Paranoid dictator': Russian journalists fill pro-Kremlin site with anti-war articles
Two Russian journalists working for a popular pro-Kremlin website filled it with anti-war articles on Monday morning in a rare act of dissent as the country celebrated the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
The articles on Lenta.ru called President Vladimir Putin a “pitiful paranoid dictator” and accused him of waging “the bloodiest war of the 21st century”.
“We had to do it today. We wanted to remind everyone what our grandfathers really fought for on this beautiful Victory Day – for peace,” said 30-year-old Egor Polyakov, one of the two journalists.
During his annual speech in front of 11,000 soldiers in the Kremlin on Monday morning, Putin sought to justify his invasion of Ukraine, tying the current fighting to the Soviet victory in the second world war.
“This is not what Victory Day is about,” Polyakov told the Guardian in an interview. “Ordinary people are dying, peaceful women and children are dying in Ukraine. Given the rhetoric that we have seen, this isn’t going to stop. We couldn’t accept this any longer. This was the only right thing we could do.”
Polyakov, who works as a business reporter at Lenta, said he and his colleague Alexandra Miroshnikova published more than 40 articles critical of the Kremlin and its actions in Ukraine. The articles have since been taken down, but can be accessed through a web archive tool.
Lenta, one of the largest sites in the country with more than 200 million monthly visitors, has been part of the relentless propaganda machine used to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lenta is owned by Rambler, a media group that was bought in 2020 by Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, which is state-owned and under US and UK sanctions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/09/russian-journalists-pro-kremlin-site-lenta-anti-war-articles