\u201cI\u2019ve already buried colleagues,\u201d Dolinina says. \u201cI live my life not feeling safe anywhere. \u2026 My colleagues get drugs planted on them. My colleagues get jailed as spies. My colleagues get murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I \u2013 Last Air in Moscow, Russian American director Julia Loktev follows a group of independent female journalists whose job is to tell the truth in a place where truth has been banned. In doing so, she offers an extended view of what it\u2019s like to be slowly strangled by an authoritarian state, where every institution is sharpened toward satisfying the grim urges of the man at the top.<\/p>\n
For the last 25 years, that man has been Putin. A former KGB lieutenant colonel, he is obsessed with rooting out enemies, domestic and foreign alike. Media has always been at the top of his list: Within a year of his first inauguration in 2000, Putin orchestrated the state takeover of NTV, Russia\u2019s premier independent television channel, and he hasn\u2019t stopped since. Reporters who challenged him were sidelined, satirical shows mocking him pulled off the air, and editorial teams at critical outlets swapped for government-friendly ones.<\/p>\n
The assault on media unfolded alongside a steady squeeze on civil society, including nongovernmental organizations, activists, and watchdogs. In 2012, in the wake of anti-Putin protests, the Russian parliament enacted a foreign agent law allowing the Ministry of Justice to designate Russians suspected of being under the influence of other countries as foreign agents.<\/p>\n
The term \u201cforeign agent\u201d itself is borrowed from the Stalin era, when authorities were busy hunting so-called enemy agents, interventionists, and provocateurs. As resurrected by Putin\u2019s regime, the designation originally targeted NGOs that received foreign funding and engaged in vaguely defined \u201cpolitical activity.\u201d In the years that followed, it extended to media organizations, then to individuals who dared to work in organizations that criticize the authorities.<\/p>\n
The foreign agent law works in tandem with the \u201cundesirable organizations\u201d law passed in 2015, after Putin\u2019s annexation of Crimea and the wave of Western sanctions that followed. The law gave the Prosecutor General\u2019s office and the Ministry of Justice authority to ban foreign-affiliated groups deemed a threat to Russia\u2019s security and was widely seen as a way to cut off U.S. and European funding for civil society. Putin has long been concerned about foreign money fueling dissent. For instance, he has famously accused the West of financing Ukraine\u2019s 2013-2014 Maidan Revolution, which ousted a pro-Russian president.<\/p>\n
Over the years, this worldview has been codified into laws that make targets out of dissenters of all stripes. My Undesirable Friends focuses on several of them. It is divided into five chapters of around an hour each; a second installment, Part II \u2013 Exile, is currently being edited. The film follows these women designated as foreign agents (many of whom worked for organizations that were deemed undesirable) in the weeks before and after Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is at once a female odyssey, a historical record, and a hard look at an unraveling society on the edge of the abyss.<\/p>\n
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Side-by-side portraits of journalists Irina Dolinina (left) and Ksenia Mironova (right). Dolinina wears a scarf and hat while standing outdoors at night, with a road and streetlights behind her. Ksenia wears a polka-dotted top inside a newsroom, monitors glowing in the background. Both gaze up at something off camera.<\/p>\n
Dozhd reporters Irina Dolinina (left) and Ksenia Mironova, featured in My Undesirable Friends, live in exile after Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s regime took its persecution of journalists further in 2022. Film still from My Undesirable Friends.<\/p>\n
The young women of My Undesirable Friends are all connected to the media outlet Dozhd, rendered as TV Rain in English. Conceived in 2008 at the end of Putin\u2019s second term\u2014when his departure still seemed possible and a progressive successor was expected\u2014Dozhd launched as the \u201cOptimistic Channel,\u201d a television station focused on lifestyle, culture, and entertainment programming, with politics only one part of the mix. Its young staff, witty presentation, and informal, Western-style studios quickly made it a platform for liberal reporters, politicians, and cultural figures.<\/p>\n
As Russia grew more authoritarian, Dozhd found itself reporting on abuses of power and airing voices that rejected Putin\u2019s anti-Western, revanchist ideology. The Kremlin noticed. In January 2014, a month before Russia\u2019s seizure of Crimea, Dozhd was accused<\/a> of insulting veterans after polling viewers on whether Leningrad, which suffered a prolonged and deadly siege during World War II, should have been surrendered to save lives. In a matter of weeks, every cable and satellite provider dropped the station, despite its apologies.<\/p>\n Dozhd shifted its content online. While other outlets lost independence through firings, license revocations, or forced ownership changes, Dozhd remained autonomous and provided a rare counterpoint to state propaganda. The government retaliated with audits, heavy fines for so-called extremism, and advertiser boycotts, pushing the outlet to the brink of bankruptcy. It survived, but its persistence made it more vulnerable to the foreign agent law, which by 2021 had turned into a blunt instrument of repression. On Aug. 20, 2021, less than a month before the parliamentary elections, Dozhd was officially branded<\/a> as one.<\/p>\n A foreign agent has few rights and many obligations. The most visible of these obligations is to preface every public communication\u2014from news reports to comments on a friend\u2019s Instagram post\u2014with an all-caps disclosure, which the movie\u2019s subjects call \u201cthe fuckery\u201d: \u201cTHIS NEWS MEDIA\/MATERIAL WAS CREATED AND\/OR DISSEMINATED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND\/OR A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT.\u201d Failure to include this disclosure can result in heavy fines and, in some cases, criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n For an individual journalist, the designation amounts to professional death. Few media outlets risk hiring someone deemed a foreign agent, even in a backroom role, since they would be obliged to disclose the association. A journalist cannot shed the label even if they leave journalism, unless a government body petitions for removal.<\/p>\n While they\u2019re unable to work, those labeled as foreign agents are saddled with bureaucratic obligations so onerous they amount to a full-time job. Once added to the Ministry of Justice\u2019s list, they are required to register a legal entity to comply with government audits. This means annually filing multiple 40-plus-page reports detailing every source of income<\/a> and matching each to expenses. Misreport by a few cents, and you face criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n This is where Russia finds itself after more than two decades of Putin\u2019s rule\u2014a far cry from the fragile democracy of the 1990s I once knew. Under such conditions, you have to be fearless or a fanatic to persist in journalism.<\/p>\n Two women, wearing t-shirts and jeans, sit across from each other at a dining table and look at their laptops. One has her mouth open mid-expression, while the other shrugs with hands raised. Behind them are windows with plants on the sill and apartment buildings visible outside at night.<\/p>\n After they were declared foreign agents, Churakova (left) and Sonya Groysman, seen in the film, started a podcast called Hello, You Are a Foreign Agent. They worked at an investigative news outlet together before it was shut down for being an \u201cundesirable organization.\u201dFilm still from My Undesirable Friends. <\/p>\n Loktev\u2019s documentary drops us into this world without orientation or explanation. It\u2019s late 2021, with Dozhd still on the air but the impending catastrophe already palpable. The young women of My Undesirable Friends embody precisely the fanaticism and fearlessness that the moment demands: driven, dedicated to the truth, and braver than most men in a country that routinely designates women as the weak gender.<\/p>\n All were at the top of their professions when they were branded foreign agents; all refused to surrender or be defined by it. They confront their new reality with defiance, humor, and a refusal of cynicism that elsewhere might seem naive. In the bleak landscape of Putin\u2019s Russia, that spirit is what makes the film compelling. You want to follow these women\u2014for five hours, or for life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not difficult to become officially undesirable while working in Russian media. Anna Nemzer, a talk-show host at Dozhd who goes by the nickname Anya, has been branded a foreign agent. Sonya Groysman, a former editor, received the designation after working at a now-banned investigative outlet. The same happened to journalists Irina Dolinina and Alesya Marokhovskaya; Marokhovskaya is also queer, which makes her doubly undesirable and, as of 2023, when Russia\u2019s Supreme Court banned<\/a> the \u201cinternational LGBT movement,\u201d officially an \u201cextremist.\u201d<\/p>\n Dozhd reporter Ksenia Mironova, who goes by Ksyusha, on the other hand, could have been the perfect model for Putin\u2019s so-called traditional values\u2014engaged to be married at 23, with clear blue eyes and the soft oval face of a Chekhov heroine\u2014were it not for the fact that, as of filming, her fianc\u00e9, fellow journalist Ivan Safronov, has been in a Moscow prison for months on treason charges. With no trial date and no evidence, Ivan was barred from seeing or corresponding with anyone, including Mironova.<\/p>\n One of the film\u2019s most chilling scenes shows Mironova at the post office, packing a box of snacks and warm clothes for Safronov. Both she and the clerk perform their roles with deadened normalcy. This is the face of evil and the image of Russia: The victim doesn\u2019t complain, the state\u2019s proxy is not ashamed; both carry out the roles assigned to them, because what else is there to do?<\/p>\n In the waning days of 2021, the atmosphere in Moscow, where the first three chapters unfold, is summed up by Nemzer: \u201cIt\u2019s a wake. But a fun one.\u201d Every day is \u201ca new low,\u201d she says. Every day, \u201cWe [wake] up in a new country.\u201d<\/p>\n After being forced out of Moscow\u2019s center, Dozhd found home in a converted factory, with hip studios that look like they could be in New York or London. The staffers make the best of their situation, filming segments like a song called \u201cMy Best Friend is a Foreign Agent\u201d or staging a James Bond-esque photoshoot riffing on their agent designation.<\/p>\n But this levity is invariably edged with dread. On one of Dozhd\u2019s studio sets, a prominent lawyer, herself deemed a foreign agent, likens the label to the yellow stars that Jews were required to wear in Nazi Germany. \u00a0The law is \u201ca weapon aimed to exterminate civil society,\u201d says another guest, human rights defender Svetlana Gannushkina, who at 83 years old is a foreign agent four times over because of her work with different NGOs.<\/p>\n The camera follows its subjects around Moscow as their public and private lives become increasingly intertwined. We enter the women\u2019s kitchens, where they bake birthday cakes for their friends; courtrooms where they futilely challenge their foreign agent labels; cafes where they discuss their podcasts with other undesirables. They talk about Emily in Paris and police vans; their cats bear the names of exiled poets.<\/p>\n There\u2019s camaraderie, refined irony, even adrenaline\u2014but none of them can beat back reality indefinitely.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re sitting around this lovely table drinking wine,\u201d Groysman says, \u201cbut each of us \u2026 is thinking: \u2018We\u2019re all fucked.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n A frequent topic of conversation is whether or when they should all leave Russia. Most know they are not safe but choose to stay and keep working. Some have family they can\u2019t or don\u2019t want to leave; Mironova, for one, fears that fleeing would only confirm the accusations about Safronov\u2019s alleged spying and add years to his sentence. (In 2022, he was sentenced<\/a> to 22 years in prison.) Others have no visa and no money. And then there\u2019s the Russian attitude of \u201cavos\u201d\u2014the ungrounded belief that things will somehow work out.<\/p>\n When the women gather in the waning hours of 2021, there is hope that the year ahead may be different\u2014without Putin, or at the very least without war. It\u2019s difficult to watch in hindsight, knowing how wrong they are.<\/p>\n A woman stands in a holding cell, dressed in a white button down, and looks through the glass at three Russian police officers.<\/p>\n Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian American journalist for Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty who was arrested for failing to register as a foreign agent, attends a hearing at the Sovetski court in Kazan, Russia, on April 1, 2024.Alexander Nemenov\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n On Feb. 24, 2022, with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin dispelled these hopes for good. Any aspirations for \u201cthe beautiful Russia of the future,\u201d once a slogan of Alexei Navalny\u2019s, were buried under the rubble of bombed maternity wards and kindergartens.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a country anymore,\u201d Nemzer says. I, a Russian American an ocean away that morning, felt exactly the same.<\/p>\n If the film\u2019s first three chapters sometimes feel drawn out, introducing many plotlines at once, the last two chapters slip by in a single breath. Spanning the days and hours leading up to the invasion and the week of its aftermath, the final act gives an arresting inside view of what it was like waking up in a country that overnight turned from a celebrated victor over fascism into a perpetuator of it.<\/p>\n In the war\u2019s early days, Dozhd maintained its independent coverage. While state channels lauded the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d to free Ukrainians from the \u201cgang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis,\u201d as Putin described<\/a> Ukraine\u2019s leaders, Dozhd showed footage of shell-shocked civilians hiding from Russian missiles in subway stations. It issued a rare on-air statement condemning the war: \u201cDon\u2019t be silent. Say no to war.\u201d<\/p>\n As the film documents, the road to Dozhd\u2019s closure is rather short. In the first 10 days of the war, the Russian authorities repeatedly lie<\/a> about not striking civilian targets. They draft laws to ban reporting<\/a> from sources not approved by the defense ministry. On March 1, Russia\u2019s media regulator blocks Dozhd\u2019s site because of its \u201cextremist reporting.\u201d After a tip about an impending raid by security forces, the staff flee the studio. On March 3, Dozhd\u2014once the Optimistic Channel\u2014suspends operations under pressure from authorities over its fact-based coverage.<\/p>\n As countries close their airspaces to Russian aircraft, those who disagree with Putin are now trapped. \u201cWe\u2019re locked up with a madman who has nuclear weapons,\u201d Mironova says. There is desperate mapping out of escape routes and packing of bags; searching for taxis that would shuttle dissenters into Europe, Georgia, Armenia; mothers begging their daughters to leave, to be careful.<\/p>\n Loktev\u2019s subjects now live in Europe and the United States. Some continued their investigative work from abroad, where safety has proved only relative. Both Dolinina and Marokhovskaya, for example, have been harassed and threatened<\/a> in Prague. Dozhd, too, faced turbulence. After briefly relaunching in Riga, the channel lost its broadcasting license over a controversial segment<\/a> (the court\u2019s decision has recently been overturned<\/a>) and had to move again, this time to Amsterdam, where it remains today.<\/p>\n These trials, however, will always be calibrated against the suffering of Ukrainians. The heroes of this film are alive, rebuilding their lives. For hundreds of thousands in Ukraine, there\u2019s nothing left to rebuild.<\/p>\n In the foreground is the silhouette of a woman walking in one direction, with the silhouette of another woman, facing the opposite direction and looking at her phone, in the midground. In the background are the towers of the St. Basil Cathedral and the Spasskaya clock tower in the historic Red Square in Moscow, and crowds of people milling through the square.<\/p>\n People walk through Red Square in Moscow on July 7, 2024.Sefa Karacan\/Anadolu via Getty Images <\/p>\n My Undesirable Friends is not an easy watch. Filmed on Loktev\u2019s iPhone, the first three chapters can sometimes feel more like raw archival footage, transcribed to little immediate effect. That\u2019s a deliberate choice, according to the film\u2019s press materials, made to create a record of the world that \u201cno longer exists,\u201d Loktev says in the opening scene. Loktev\u2019s fascination with history is understandable, but unfortunately in the Russian context, this situation is not that unique: A paranoid ruler weaponizes a passive populace against \u201cenemies,\u201d a handful of dissenters notwithstanding, most of whom will be removed without hesitation.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t stop the young women in this documentary from agonizing over whether they could have done more to prevent the war. \u201cFor 20 years a monster was growing in front of our eyes, whom we all fed with our silence and our passivity,\u201d Marokhovskaya says.<\/p>\n One could say that My Undesirable Friends is a story of failed resistance\u2014a warning to faltering democracies wondering whether one can \u201cturn such a huge country into North Korea,\u201d as Dolinina says. A glance at today\u2019s Russia suffices. The courage of the few was simply not enough to overcome the acquiescence of the many.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"December 2021, a Moscow kitchen. It\u2019s close to New Year\u2019s\u2014a time when, according to Soviet lore, miracles were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[62633,2766,2000,299,87623,6219,2452,332,657,24666,333,157083],"class_list":{"0":"post-471964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-authoritarianism","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-fp-weekend","13":"tag-homepage_regional_europe","14":"tag-media","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-ukraine-russia","18":"tag-vladimir-putin","19":"tag-womenu2019s-rights"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115312173210181950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Russia-Ukraine-journalists-Putin-crackdown-My-Undesirable-Friends-Olga-Churakova-Sonya-Groysman.png\")
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