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Democracy Dies in Darkness

Fleeing Putin’s wartime crackdown, Russian journalists build media hubs in exile

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March 13, 2022 at 3:27 p.m. EDT
Sergey Smirnov, a Russian journalist and the editor in chief of Mediazona, who fled to Vilnius because of the possible threat of persecution, during an online team meeting in his rented apartment in Vilnius, Lithuania, on March 11. (Arturas Morozovas for The Washington Post)
8 min

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Sergey Smirnov sat on the floor of a dark and dirty Airbnb, leading an editorial meeting of the Russian news organization that continues to work even as he and his staff are on the run from the Kremlin’s crackdown on a free press.

Smirnov, the editor in chief of Mediazona, was in an apartment above a fried chicken restaurant in this Baltic capital, surrounded by two dogs and the half-dozen stuffed shopping bags he was able to fling into his car on March 4. That was the day Russian President Vladimir Putin approved draconian prison terms for journalists who stray from Kremlin propaganda. Smirnov’s wife and two sons, including a 4-week-old newborn, remain in Moscow.