To understand why Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine and obliterate the world order, it is essential to read this New York Times op-ed by Mikhail Zygar, a prominent Russian journalist—now in exile—and the author of All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. The piece is a candy bowl of palace intrigue concerning the warmongering strongman’s increasingly inscrutable state of mind, based on conversations with Kremlin insiders and other high-level sources. Zygar, 41, is a towering figure in his own right—a decorated former war correspondent and TV news boss whose Putin book earned him a reputation as one of the world’s foremost Kremlinologists. He recently joined the mass exodus of Russia’s media and creative class, fleeing the country both in protest of the war in Ukraine and for fear of his well-being in a society where independent news-gathering and free expression have now effectively been criminalized. I caught up with Zygar for a discussion of all these things, which is condensed and edited below.
Vanity Fair: Start by bringing me up to speed on your personal circumstances.
Mikhail Zygar: I’m now in Berlin. It became clear to me that I’d have to leave Russia almost immediately after the war started. From the very beginning I had only one feeling: that the world has crashed. It was a feeling of some kind of apocalypse, because everything we were hoping for, that we were dreaming of, that we’d been fighting for for many years, that future was no longer available. It was over. All our hopes were in vain, and everything we’ve been fighting for was in vain. That was the first feeling. I started my day on February 24 writing an open letter to fellow Russians protesting the war. Initially, it was cosigned by 12 very well-known Russian writers and filmmakers. I published it on my Facebook page, and thousands of others joined and signed. Leaving Russia was some kind of moral obligation because I felt, if we could do nothing to stop the war right now, at least I should not stay inside the country that is waging an aggressive war. The issue of safety was another reason for leaving. Within a couple of days, the Russian parliament amended the criminal code [to criminalize] protests against the war.
When did you leave Moscow?
I left on February 27.
Has everyone in your circle left?
Not everyone, because not everyone has the possibility to leave. On the day when I was leaving, it had become already rather complicated, because the airspace of most European countries was closed for Russian planes. I had a ticket to Berlin, and I couldn’t use it because Germany closed the airspace half an hour before my departure. I had to change the ticket and go to Berlin by Dubai. Now we know that up to half a million people have left during the first two or three weeks after the war started.
And the ones who stayed behind?
Some of them feel they still have the obligation to continue their work and to try to spread information. Actually, the last possibility for that is not formally closed. The most important remaining platform is not yet closed.
Which is?
YouTube. That’s the last one remaining. Telegram is still operating too. So some people remain in Russia because they’re trying to use the last opportunities [to share accurate information], and then they’ll probably decide to move out of Russia. Some people feel they cannot leave their parents or children, or they just have no money to relocate. It’s a huge personal tragedy for everyone.
Do you expect to be expatriated permanently, or can you imagine going back?
That depends on what’s going to happen next. But I do not see any opportunity—not only for independent journalists, but also businessmen, IT specialists, for anyone who denounces the war—to be back as long as Putin is in power. Even if the war is over, we cannot pretend that nothing has changed. Everything has changed.
Even before this, the media space in Russia had changed so much over the two decades Putin has been in power.
I started working as an international correspondent for one of the biggest Russian quality newspapers, Kommersant, when Boris Yeltsin was still in power, in 1999. For almost 10 years, I was a war correspondent, covering the Iraq war, Kosovo, the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. That was not the easiest time for Russian media, but from today’s point of view, it would be considered a golden age. It was possible to have independent TV channels and newspapers and magazines. The one I worked for was like The New York Times of Russia. But during the second presidential term of Putin, the situation began revving up.
This would have been around when? The late aughts and early 2010s? That’s when the state’s influence became more pronounced?
We had a feeling the situation was changing, but there was a hope that traditional media was still possible. 2010 was the year when we founded TV Rain. It was a moment when it was the only independent news channel. I became its first editor in chief, and we became probably the most popular and influential TV channel in Russia. There was a short period of hope that things would change for the better, for a more open and democratic society. We had that illusion. But very soon we faced the obvious trend that it was going to be worse. Our TV channel was destroyed in 2014, a couple of weeks before the Crimea annexation. It was a very weird and clever orchestrated campaign. We were blamed for being fascists by the state media. There was no direct pressure from the government. It looked more like a normal business process. All the owners of cable networks or satellite networks decided to switch off our TV channel. They called us and apologized, and confessed it wasn’t their own decision, that the Kremlin demanded it. The only platform where we could be broadcast was our own website. Almost overnight, we became an online TV channel. Soon after that, the Crimea annexation happened and the war in eastern Ukraine started. It was obvious that the attack against our channel was a preemptive attack to stop us from telling the truth about those events.