#UPDATE US State Department issues travel warning saying Moscow "may single out and detain US citizens in Russia".
Citing the potential for harassment of US citizens by Russian authorities, the warning repeats calls for Americans not to travel to Russia or to leave "immediately" pic.twitter.com/uMrcgTcypd
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 30, 2022
Published in Politico, but Michelle Berdy is actually a reporter for the independent Moscow Times:
… I hadn’t set out to spend my life in Moscow. After graduating from college in 1978, I came to Moscow to continue studying Russian and become a translator. Except for a few years in the 1980s, I’ve lived there ever since. I worked as a translator and interpreter, as a field producer and reporter in television journalism, a manager of non-profit communication programs, and at The Moscow Times newspaper for almost 20 years. I write a column about Russian language and culture, and since 2015 I’ve been the arts editor.
Along the way, I got married and divorced, danced at weddings and attended funerals, was a godmother and an honorary auntie, bought an apartment and a series of Russian cars, spent my summers at the dacha, sang in a choir, traveled around the countryside with my Russian therapy dog, learned how to make Siberian dumplings, went to every art exhibition and museum, and had favorite seats at the Bolshoi. I have friends I’ve known for four decades and watched as their toddlers grew up and became parents with toddlers of their own…
On Friday, March 4, the eighth day of the war, the Russian Parliament passed a law on the media. “Fake news” about the war would be punished by up to 15 years in jail. The law’s definition of “fake news” clarified that the war could not be called “a war.” It had to be called a “special military operation.” The terms “invasion” or “aggression” were also prohibited. Anything that “discredited” the armed forces was illegal, but what “discreditation” consisted of was not specified. Only Russian government and state-media sources could be used by non-state media.
At the newspaper, we reported on the law and expected that it would be signed into effect that night. We didn’t think, however, that it was applicable to Western media like us; The Moscow Times was registered in the Netherlands.
That night I woke up like a shot at 3 a.m. In my kitchen, I groped in the dark for my television remote. My cable service had CNN, BBC, EuroNews and several other foreign news channels. The law was only a few hours old, but my TV screen lit up with an announcement that CNN was no longer available. BBC and the other news channels were still on the air, but when I flipped through my Twitter feed, it was a list of closures. Znak, an independent news outlet based in Yekaterinburg — one of the last internet publications still publishing — had closed. BBC, ABC, CBS were leaving at least until they assessed the situation. Apparently, the law would apply to non-Russian media, too…
It was time to leave. But I still wasn’t sure. Maybe I was being alarmist. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. I called my old friend, Yevgeniya Albats, known as Zhenya to her friends, a journalist and writer who always has a handle on the truth — and isn’t afraid of it. At her apartment, Zhenya made tea and opened a bottle of wine — because you never know what you need, she said — as I went through my panicked reasoning. Was I in danger?
Zhenya had just spent a couple of hours that morning discussing the new law with a lawyer specializing in media regulation. Theoretically, she said, it was the owner or editor who would be fined or punished for a violation, not the writer. So I was probably not in any real danger.
Pause. “On the other hand,” she said, “there’s always the risk of hostage-taking.”…