RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has cracked down on the press, labeling a number of Russian journalists as foreign agents. In early September, Nobel Prize winning journalist Dmitry Muratov was added to that list.
NEWS ARCHIVE: The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, Putin has just declared that he is a foreign agent
NEWS ARCHIVE: Muratov still lives in Russia and edited the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Putin vs. the Press is a new FRONTLINE documentary. It follows Muratov’s battle for free speech inside Russia as he faces personal attacks and fights to keep his reporters safe.
PATRICK FORBES: Why did you become a journalist?
DMITRY MURATOV: [speaks Russian]
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Joining me to talk about Putin Vs. the Press is Patrick Forbes, the film’s director. I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, and this is the FRONTLINE Dispatch.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Patrick, thank you so much for joining me on The Dispatch.
PATRICK FORBES: It’s an honor to be here. I’m looking forward to this.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Let’s start first by talking about how you came to make this film, such an unusual and unique film, about Dmitri Muratov.
PATRICK FORBES: Well, I’ve known him 20 years. And ever since the sort of chaos of the post Soviet era, he’s been, a bit of a guide in that time, but this particular film arose because he was about to get a Nobel Prize. And I thought, hmm, that’s interesting. There’s not many people I know who are getting Nobel Prizes. And I also thought more seriously that that heightened the chance of conflict between him and Vladimir Putin, because the two people have very, very different philosophies. So I rang Dima up and I said, look, you all right if we make a documentary together? And he went, sure. It’s about time you made one about me. And I laughed and said, and that’s how it all started basically.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So tell me about Dmitry.
PATRICK FORBES: Well, as though you were meeting him for the first time and you’ve never seen a picture of him, he’s a big bear of a man. Uh, he likes a drink. First time I met him he was, oh, it was 10 in the morning and he insisted we down half a bottle of whiskey together, which certainly is not what I normally do at 10 AM. Normally it’s straight black coffee. Um, but he’s instinctively brave, if you’re discussing him as a person, um, in a way that very few people I know are. It’s just, it’s… he’s not showy about it, he just does it, and he puts that courage in service of his ideals, which are, and this is very unusual in Russia, he is absolutely wedded to freedom of speech, and defending freedom of speech, and changing what has become a centuries old mindset that says, if there’s trouble, you just shut up, um, because that way you protect yourself. Dmitry always does the exact opposite. If there’s trouble, he wants to talk about it, fight about it, and get it right. And that’s why he set up the paper that he edits, Novaya Gazeta. He was fed up working on a, uh, a state paper, fed up with state intervention, and decided he would set out. So that’s, that’s, as it were, the word picture of the man.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: And so he’s an editor. I mean, the story of his paper is an incredible one. Just tell me about his paper.
PATRICK FORBES: Oh, well, that’s the, that’s the easiest question. It’s in 1993, he leaves a state paper and founds his own paper with a bunch of colleagues. It’s called Novaya Gazeta. Which means new paper, and it, uh, it stands for just that. A new voice, a new way of reporting in Russia. One that is not beholden to the state, not beholden to any interest, and it’s going to, or at least its mission statement was, that they were going to shine a new light on Russia, and you could argue they’ve done just that. Uh, the paper specializes in two things, sounds a very odd mix, but it’s literary criticism on the one hand and investigations on the other, and the investigations have revealed the cruelty of the Chechen War, the billions stolen by the ruling elite, uh, the incredible bad behavior of the Kremlin in numerous crises, And there’s been a very high price to pay for this. Six of Dmitry’s journalists have been killed.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: That’s really something. Really something. I mean, uh, one of the most powerful moments in the film is when you understand, you know, the grave consequences to the work that they’ve done.
PATRICK FORBES: Yeah, I mean, well, you will be familiar with, uh, as an, as an editor, sending somebody into a dangerous situation, and you will know how tough that is.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Absolutely.
PATRICK FORBES: And I think, in Dmitry’s case, the knowledge of how tough that has proven to be in the past just wrecks him with guilt. I have, I’ve described him as a brave bear of a man, but that doesn’t mean that he is unaware of the risks he’s running or that his team are running and the awareness of those deaths sits with him night and day. It governs all his behavior. And it was evident. The film ends, I hope I’m not giving away too many spoilers, with uh, him having to go to rescue a colleague who has been beaten. When he told me he was going to do this, I have to say, I said, ‘you’re mad, you shouldn’t go, you know, you’re running such a risk yourself.’ And he just said, ‘I have to, I don’t want another one dead.’
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Patrick, you know, it’s incredible to think about how they have been able until very recently to keep the paper going. How did they do that? How do you keep that level of journalism going?
PATRICK FORBES: Well, down the years, it’s involved uh, Dmitry striking compromises, uh, which not all of which have been very well received, it has to be said. So for example, he stopped reporting on the Chechen war when one of his reporters has her life threatened and he… It says, right, okay, I’m not reporting on Chechnya for a year. And what he did when war started was he decided that he was going to observe the letter, but not the spirit of the law. So he would obviously, he would allude to what was going on in Ukraine, but he wouldn’t call it war, because if you call it war, everybody goes to jail on the paper. Or he would say, oh, look, tigers are going to Ukraine, which of course meant tiger tanks, uh, but it didn’t mean the stripy animals. Um, and that kept the paper going for about 30 days until eventually either Putin or the ministry had a sense of humor failure and said, all right, enough of this. We’re going to suspend you, uh, unless you stop. So he just stopped reporting and, uh, has sadly been unable to, apart from a brief attempt to bring out a magazine, has been unable to report since then. I noticed that the assets under his control were seized by the state. So I think we can safely say that Novaya isn’t going to be reporting anytime soon.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Right. And, uh, tell us, let’s just jump ahead to the situation that he’s now facing personally.
PATRICK FORBES: Well, weeks ago, uh, he, he was named a foreign agent. Uh, that has a particular resonance in Russia. It’s, uh, in Stalinist times, it was used to denote an enemy of the state. And, uh, upwards of 300 people have been called foreign agents. As a result of being called a foreign agent, you have to say before you open your mouth in public, I am a foreign agent. You can’t write anything publicly without saying, I am a foreign agent because you are deemed an enemy of the state. It’s a peculiarly Russian situation in that it doesn’t affect his ability to meet people, it doesn’t affect his ability to travel, it just singles him out in society. And how it’s done is it’s just announced, there’s never any justification, you’re just informed overnight that Raney Aronson is now an enemy of the state. And, so Dima being Dima, uh, he has appealed this designation and, uh, and he will appear in court, but he will also force the Kremlin to appear in court and justify exactly why they have called him an enemy of the state. But it, at a deeper level, it symbolizes the increasing restriction on freedom of press in Russia, the slow strangling of any independent voices. Uh, I mean, the media is pretty totally under Putin’s control and, um, the only way you can have independent thought is pretty much by emailing your friends.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I mean, you know, the, the film starts almost as a light moment. He wins the Nobel, right? And then at the end, you know, one of his, um, dear reporters is attacked. It’s a very alarming attack. He’s with her. And then he’s called a foreign agent. A lot of people are asking in this film, is Dmitry ever going to leave Russia? And what’s your gut at this point?
PATRICK FORBES: Um, my honest answer is that I can’t answer your question because I fear that anything you and I say, may be taken by the Russian government as proof of his intentions as a foreign agent. And I think that’s a very sorry moment in the history of Russia and indeed arguably in the history of the world. It shows the absolute lack of ability to speak openly about somebody who I’ve known for 20 years, who you’ve been acquainted with for a year and a half, and it is on the one hand, it’s almost humorous, it’s so bizarre, but it’s not, uh, it’s not humorous, it’s serious, and I think what I can say safely, and I think anyone can say safely, is I fear for what lies ahead for him, um, and one has only to look at what happened to Alexei Navalny, um, to see in one way what happens if he stays inside Russia, which is his declared intent. I should say that the one person who has said something about this is Dmitry. And as recently as a week and a half ago, he said, ‘I want to stay in Russia. This is my country.’
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So, okay, so the next question I have for you is, another extraordinary scene in this film is the journey that you make to Latvia and what’s happening in Latvia. It is, what an endearing moment. Tell us about that moment and what that tells us about the power of journalism. I mean, it’s an amazing moment for me as a journalist watching this.
PATRICK FORBES: Well, like you, I can remember actually telling you I was at the start, I was going, you know, why are we going to Latvia?
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I know!
PATRICK FORBES: And, uh, I think you, like everybody else I discussed this with said, come on, there’s gotta be another reason for this. And sure enough. Uh, it’s within six days of the war, I get a message, Dmitry’s going to Latvia to judge a documentary film festival. And I think, what? He doesn’t know anything about documentaries. Um, so obviously he’s going for a different reason. That reason is he’s going to negotiate in secret with the Latvian government. So I arrive and I say to him, come on, what’s the real reason? Why are you really here? Tell me. And he promptly tells us on camera that he’s negotiating in secret, uh, with the Latvian government. And as he does so, he loses his temper with my producer, um, who’s a very fine woman called Yelena Durden-Smith and who he has known for, I think, 30 years. They’re Muscovites together. And he says, Yelena, these are secret negotiations, secret, you understand? And I go, okay, we’ll keep them secret, Dima. Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, so, he, we keep them secret, and eventually, journalists start coming over from Moscow to Riga, and they set up another paper in exile. They have to pretend there is no link to the old paper, uh, because if they even admit one tiny bit of relationship between Moscow and Latvia, everyone in Moscow goes to jail. So there’s a real jeopardy. But slowly, slowly, slowly, uh, they put together a paper under the editorship of an impertable, brave 30 year-old former professor of philosophy called Kirill Martinov, um, who learns, I think he learns English and Latvian in six weeks so that he can edit this paper, and it’s a raging success. And, like you say, it is testimony to the power of journalism. Journalism, in this case, produced initially by four people sitting on a bunch of suitcases in a tiny flat in Riga, and now, in a slightly swankier office. But, it reports on Russian atrocities. It reports on Kremlin malfeasance, it reports on atrocities in Chechnya, it does the things that Novaya Gazeta does, and it does the thing that every decent paper does, and as a result Russian, the Russian people love it and the Russian government hate it.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So, I mean, Patrick, like, you know, you and I spoke a lot about revealing the very relationship that they’ve been trying to not reveal publicly and, you know, just as a journalist and editor and, you know, I’m just looking at these young people worrying about them…
PATRICK FORBES: Yeah. Well, we were all worried. And I have to say I was worried up until the moment uh, I think it was uh, in November last year, Dmitry and Kirill, the editor, had met in conditions of total secrecy in Vienna, so, to discuss how they were going to keep the paper alive. And I thought, and they allowed us to film this scene, and that was the scene that, I have to say, worried you, worried me, worried my wife, actually, and indeed one of my daughters when she watched.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: I’m not surprised. Yeah, I’m not surprised.
PATRICK FORBES: And everyone kept saying, how the hell can you keep that in the film? And, um… And then, three weeks after that, uh, Dmitry was going to an award from uh, a very distinguished organization called Reporters Without Borders. And he attends it, publicly, with Kirill right beside him. So, in other words, they have decided, right. Enough of the pretense. We are together. The Russian government know we are together. We are going to blaze in this relationship to the world. It’s another, I’m struggling to find a polite term for it, but it’s another, uh, act of defiance to Putin. And, um, and they have between themselves decided, right, we, we’re ending this pretense. We’re, we’re gonna tough it out. And the result of that was, Uh, that they were designated, that the, I think the paper was called undesirable. So I think they can’t go back to Russia, or at least can’t go back to Russia safely. Um, but they feel that is a price worth paying for telling the truth. And I think that is also the underlying message of this film. You know, organizations like Frontline, like Novaya, are about telling the truth. There’s a price to that, but we all think that price is worth paying.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: So Patrick, you know, some of the most powerful scenes are inside Russia. It’s very, very difficult to film inside Russia. I know how it all went down. Just tell our audience, how did you pull that off, actually?
PATRICK FORBES: Ok, well, this is the bit that I can tell you, uh, tell everyone about. Um, we had some very, very brave people who were willing to travel to Russia, and, as they filmed, um, I think the bit that I can talk about is no rushes were in their possession for anything more than, say, about a couple of minutes before they were uploaded. We had to be very, very careful and very… uh, the security protocols involved us writing, I think it was a 50 page document every time we filmed, uh, and before anyone associated with this film, uh, had their credit, we had asked them, I think it was three times each, and in writing, whether or not, uh, they wanted to have their name on the film. So, they all said, yep, they’d like to have their name on the film.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Incredible.
PATRICK FORBES: Now, and, you know, I think that’s sort of testament to the, without sounding too schlocky, it’s testament to the power of the human spirit. People want to do this. People want to support what they see as a sort of fight for the battle for Russia’s soul. And, uh, the one person who couldn’t travel to, uh, Russia, uh, is the person who you’re talking to. And I did occasionally say to my wife, um, come on, maybe I should go over and she’d say, darling, the one thing I insisted on before you start making this film is you can meet Dmitry outside Russia, but not inside Russia. And I sort of, anyway, I eventually talked to a couple of my friends who are journalists, uh, experienced Moscow journalists, now having both of them having to be out. And they just both went, Patrick, that is a seriously bad idea. And I can remember having a sort of conversation with you, and you, without saying quite so much, having a not dissimilar reaction.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Absolutely. I mean, those are the, those are those conversations between filmmaker and editor where you know, you know, it’s harrowing.
PATRICK FORBES: Yeah.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Um, so Patrick, I want to ask you, um, one last question. As you finish this film, as it launches into the world. Uh, what’s your hope as a filmmaker? I mean, what’s your hope?
PATRICK FORBES: My hope is that people learn a lesson from it, that the people learn that actually the newspaper that your town, that your city is home to is actually so much more important than you realize because it stands for – as does the TV station, the radio station– it stands for freedom of expression. It stands for a check on unbridled behavior. There isn’t any way that America or Britain or France could lurch into a war without people criticizing. And that I hope is what this film is about. Sure, it’s about a brave man, and it’s about the triumph of the human spirit, but that man stands for a whole lot more. And that, I think, is, is the lesson of my film. And my fear is that the tide of history may be against him and against us, but my hope is that I’m wrong.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Well, I share that hope. I really appreciate you being on The Dispatch. Thank you for your important contributions and your work and for all that you’re doing.
PATRICK FORBES: Thank you for letting me do it and for supporting me during it. It’s been a complete privilege.
RANEY ARONSON-RATH: Thanks again to Patrick Forbes for joining me on The Dispatch. To watch Putin V. the Press and all our films head to frontline dot org, check out our YouTube channel or find us on the PBS video app.
