Mikhail Zygar

Mikhail Zygar

Mikhail Zygar (Russian: Михаил Викторович Зыгарь) is a Russian journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of the only Russian independent news TV-channel, Dozhd (2010 - 2015). Under Zygar's leadership, Dozhd provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012 as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national television stations.^[1] Zygar is also the author of the book 'All the Kremlin's Men', the history of Putin's Russia, based on interviews with Russian politicians from Putin's inner circle. The book has become an outstanding best-seller in Russia.

Biography

Zygar was born in Moscow, 31 January 1981. He became known as a war correspondent of Kommersant, the most influential Russian newspaper, covering wars in Iraq and Lebanon, genocide in Darfur, and revolution in Kyrgyzstan. In May 2005 Zygar was the only international journalist to report from Uzbekistan's Andijan (Andijan Massacre). After that he investigated Russian arms supplies to Uzbekistan. In August, 2005 he was brutally beaten by unknown men in Moscow, supposedly Uzbek security agents.

In 2009 and 2010 he worked as political editor and deputy editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek.

In 2010 Zygar became the first (founding) editor in chief of Dozhd, the first independent TV-channel in Russia in 10 years. Dozhd rose to prominence in 2011 with its coverage of the mass protests against Vladimir Putin.^[2] Zygar organised live coverage of all the protest rallies, which were largely ignored by state-owned television. Vice News called Zygar and his team 'the last journalists in Russia'^[3].

In 2012 - 2014 Zygar was among the group of 'leading Russian journalists' who had annual interviews with President of Russia (then Prime Minister) Dmitry Medvedev. According to AP reporter 'Mikhail Zygar's questions were sharper than those of the others^[4]'.

In 2014 Dozhd became a target of politically motivated attacks. Its troubles began when the channel was aggressively covering the daily anti-government protests in Ukraine, which state-owned television dismissed as a neo-Nazi coup. The crackdown came at the end of January, when Dozhd hosted a history program on the 1941-44 Siege of Leningrad and put a question up for a vote: Would it have been worth it to surrender Leningrad to save lives? Famine in the city, now called St. Petersburg, during that epic siege killed more than 500,000 people. The question caused a stir for its implication of a lack of patriotism, prompting Kremlin officials to call for a shutdown of the channel. Dozhd apologized, but that didn't seem to help. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, accused Dozhd of "crossing a moral and ethical red line," while the State Duma condemned the channel for "neo-Nazism" and "betraying your own people".^[5]"

Nearly all cable networks dropped Dozhd in a matter of days, and since then the channel has been largely ignored. Then the Russian parliament passed a bill that barred cable channels from running ads. The channel cut its expenses in half, shed about 30 percent of its staff and reduced its monthly budget to 20 million rubles ($357,000) — a fraction of any state TV budget — before being hit with an eviction notice.

Simultaneously Dozhd raised about $1 million in a crowd-funding campaign in March, proving that the demand for independent media in Russia is still there.

Since its inception in 2010, Dozhd had its studio in a former chocolate factory on the Moskva River, but its landlord broke the lease in November, 2014, forcing the channel to look for new space. Sympathizers offered Dozhd a place elsewhere, but last week they were told they can't broadcast out of there anymore. Finally the TV-channel started broadcasting from an ordinary flat in Moscow.

In December 2015 prosecutors arrived at the office of Russia's Dozhd TV channel to perform an inspection of the premises. The prosecutors claimed to be investigating the channel's activities in relation to anti-extremism, labor and licensing legislation.^[6] Later Zygar in his interview with RBC newspaper admitted that Dozhd participated in well-known investigation of Russian Prosecutor General's family conducted by ant-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. According to media speculations that cooperation could lead to the beginning of the inspections.^[7]

A week later Zygar announced he would be leaving the post of chief editor. He told «Kommersant» that he intends to engage in his own multimedia project «the History of Free Russia». «I’m five and a half years running the channel, every Executive needs to expire once a period, that’s right, I gotta do something,» added Zygar.^[8] But according to other independent media Zygar's resignation could be caused by political pressure. Chief editor of «Echo of Moscow» radio Alexei Venediktov claimed that some high-ranking statesmen including Prime-Minister Dmitry Medvedev were infuriated by the book and they demanded Dozhd's owner Natalia Sindeeva to get rid of Zygar.^[9]

Awards

In 2014 CPJ announced that Mikhail Zygar was to receive the International Press Freedom Award.^[10] He was the seventh Russian to be honored (after Tatyana Mitkova in 1991, Evgeny Kiselyov in 1995,Yelena Masyuk in 1997, Musa Muradov in 2003, Dmitry Muratov in 2007 and Nadira Isayeva in 2010).^[11]

Books

'War in Myth' (2007). Collection of Zygar's essays about his work in hotspots like Iraq, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan etc.

Gazprom. New Russian Weapon (2008), together with Valery Panyushkin. Investigation of the most mighty Russian state-owned-corporation.

'All the Kremlin's Men^[12]' (2015). The book became the most important Russian non-fiction about the metamorphoses of Putin and his inner circle. The book was the #1 bestseller in Russia for 4 months. In it Mikhail Zygar traces Vladimir Putin's ascent to become the most powerful Russian president in decades, and illustrates the grip that extreme paranoia has on Moscow's power elite.^[13] It took Zygar seven years to write, interviewing current and former associates of the Russian president. In his book, Zygar battles against the idealization of Putin as a savvy and ingenious puppet-master; both the demonic version put forth by the West, and the idolizing version propagated by Russia's official state media. Zygar is far from adapting the insulted tone of the Russian establishment in his assessment. He is more interested in tracing Russian leadership's slide into the aggressive world view that has eventually led to the war in Eastern Ukraine and military intervention in Syria.^[14]

The book became a huge event in Ukraine. It revealed that annexation of Crimea was planned by the Kremlin in December, 2013.^[15]

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich praised the book saying that "This is the first consistent description of everything that has happened over the last 20 years that I have read. It is a very serious study and an opportunity to learn from first hand reports".^[16] The book was also published in Germany, Bulgaria, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary. French, English and Chinese versions are to appear in 2016.

Films

• To Bury Stalin (2013)
• Who's the Power (2013)
• Past and Duma (2013). Dramatic mini-series about history of Russian Parliament

References

External links

• Mikhail Zygar, Russia. 2014 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee