It was supposed to be a relaxing dinner with friends in Tbilisi, Georgia, before a move to Berlin. But things didn’t turn out as planned for Irina Babloyan.
That evening, the Russian journalist suddenly fell ill. By morning, her head hurt, her hands and feet were red and burning, and her mouth tasted like metal.
Doctors later determined poisoning was the most likely cause for the symptoms. The top suspect: Moscow.
The incident occurred in October 2022. When Babloyan spoke with VOA this February, she was still suffering the physical and emotional consequences. Her experience underscores the lengths Moscow goes to in order to silence its critics, analysts say.
For a while, Babloyan said, she stopped going to restaurants, fearing she might be targeted again. Now, she goes out just to feel normal, albeit with a degree of caution. “If I don’t do it, I will go crazy,” she said.
Letting the attack disrupt her life is exactly what the perpetrators wanted, she believes, and Babloyan refuses to give in.
When someone wants to kill you, it’s kind of a difficult thing to understand.
“When someone wants to kill you, it’s kind of a difficult thing to understand,” she said.
Babloyan is one of a handful of Russian exiles who are believed to have been poisoned since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. More suspected poisonings took place before then.
In Berlin, Babloyan was treated at the same hospital as Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who was poisoned in 2020.
VOA traveled to the German capital just days after Navalny’s death in a Siberian prison. Memorial flowers and candles had already piled up outside the Russian Embassy.
Berlin police are investigating the cases of suspected poisonings of Russians in Germany.
The Kremlin dismisses claims of being involved in such attacks. Russia’s Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Berlin did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment.
Threats to journalists, inside and out of Russia, have increased since the invasion of Ukraine, watchdogs say, and independent media in the country quickly found themselves bound by new laws that effectively made coverage impossible.
Outlets have been branded as “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations,” and 22 journalists — including two Americans — were in jail at the end of 2023, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The choices for Russia’s independent journalists are to continue working in Russia and risk prison, or to go into exile, where safety still is not a guarantee.
Life on the outside
When Babloyan’s symptoms began that night in October, the journalist was preparing to move to Berlin, where colleagues from her outlet, Echo of Moscow, were regrouping after Russian authorities forced them to close several months earlier.
Resettling is difficult, and transnational repression only makes it harder, said Penelope Winterhager, managing director at the JX Fund.
The threats facing exiled outlets means Winterhager and her entire team are conscious of security and wary of sharing their office address.
But from the group’s Berlin building, the sound of the city’s afternoon traffic drifted up to the windows as she described how the JX Fund helps news outlets to regroup in exile and to navigate transnational repression.
The phenomenon — in which hostile governments use legal action, threats or attacks to try to target critics outside their borders — aims to intimidate critics, Winterhager said.
“They don’t want them to report anymore. They want to frighten them. And if people break into your apartment, if poisonings are happening, if you can only walk around with a bodyguard, this does make you afraid after a while,” she said.
It’s [an] illusion that when you’re not in Russia, you’re absolutely safe.
Journalists in exile agree.
“It’s [an] illusion that when you’re not in Russia, you’re absolutely safe,” said Katerina Abramova, who heads communications at the exiled outlet Meduza. She moved to Latvia before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, then resettled in Berlin.
In one of Berlin’s many parks, Abramova spoke about how Meduza decided to spread its staff across several countries. Given the prevalence of Moscow’s transnational repression, they thought it would be safer than having everyone based in one city.
But harder still was preventing attacks on their website and coverage. Meduza has faced cyberattacks, and its website is blocked in Russia.
The latter tactic, said Anastasiya Zhyrmont, threatens the very survival of exiled Russian media. Zhyrmont, who covers Eastern Europe for the digital rights group Access Now, met with VOA in Berlin’s Treptower Park.
“The result is the media is simply dying out in exile because they cannot reach an audience within Russia,” Zhyrmont said.
Trauma of exile
When it comes to transnational repression, the media often cover the immediate incidents and their direct effects. But the protracted harassment leaves a mark on these journalists. In conversations with them, their deeper trauma is evident in their feelings of paranoia and guilt, loneliness and grief.
In the age of Putin’s war in Ukraine, sacrifice is a way of life for Russia’s exiled reporters, said Ekaterina Fomina, who fled Russia shortly after it invaded Ukraine.
“We left everything behind,” Fomina said. “For me, maybe it took even a year to realize that your past is erased.
“You’re sacrificing everything in order to continue your job,” Fomina told VOA. A journalist who has worked for various independent Russian outlets, Fomina left her home country for Latvia before moving to the Czech Republic, and then on again.
Now, Fomina won’t publicly say where she’s based out of fear that she would be physically surveilled by Russian authorities.
She is already under investigation for spreading what Moscow views as false information about the Russian military. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years behind bars.
After these two years, you simply realize that there is no country and no place in the world where you belong.
The accusation stems from a 2022 story Fomina published at the independent outlet iStories. In it, a Russian soldier confessed to killing a Ukrainian civilian.
Speaking with VOA in what was her seventh apartment in two years, Fomina said, “You’re still a hostage in their hands, because they can influence your life. They can prosecute you even without you being there.”
As she spoke, her rescue dog, Cooper — all black save for his white chest and front paws — paced uneasily. Fomina spoke to him soothingly in Russian. The frequent relocations have made it hard for them both to re-create a semblance of home.
For Fomina, the legal harassment has only exacerbated the challenges that come with starting life over and over.
“After these two years, you simply realize that there is no country and no place in the world where you belong,” said Fomina, who currently reports for the exiled outlet TV Rain, known in Russian as Dozhd.
None of the exiled journalists who spoke with VOA feel particularly comfortable in exile.
Part of the reason is that their lives still revolve around Moscow. As Meduza’s Abramova said, “You have two different lives.”
To try to feel at home, Fomina brings two pieces of art by a Ukrainian artist to each new apartment. But those efforts can feel futile.
“I live abroad, but psychologically, I live somewhere in between Russia and Ukraine, and probably on the battlefield,” she said. “You find a flat. You put your pictures there. And technically it’s your home, but it’s not a home for your heart.”
With family and friends still in Russia and Ukraine, Fomina said she has a hard time enjoying her personal life as she puts all her energy into her work.
The question that hangs over many exiled Russian journalists: Who would do this work if not for them?
“Your readers need you now more than ever,” Abramova said.
Babloyan agreed. “They need to have information. They need to listen to the truth. They need us,” she said.
Babloyan still works for Echo. But even as coverage of her suspected poisoning passed, her life — and health — is far from normal. She still has problems with her skin, she said, and she doesn’t have the same energy that she had in the past.
“But much better than a year ago. A year ago, I thought I’m going to die,” Babloyan said.
One thing that helped keep Babloyan going is reporting. “The work — oh, my God, I can’t live without it,” she said. “If I stopped doing it, I would go crazy.”