"And when I became a "foreign agent", I couldn't even keep an Instagram, which I originally conceived as a personal diary, I had no personal space left: photos of nature - even those had to be accompanied by that idiotic note "This message...". Without that stupid caption, I couldn't post anything at all. And the feeling that I was willingly imposing a crime on myself - that's how I felt - was terrible. But the most horrible thing was justifying myself. Because the Pskov region is an area where there is no internet, you can drive twelve kilometers from the city and the net doesn't catch on. But it catches Channel One, it catches Russia24, it catches Russia-1. And people really believed I was a spy. They really, really believed it. They called me "Uncle Sam," they called me things. It's so humbling to go up to people, respond to their own troubles and problems, and hear, "You're a spy. What do you want here? What are you snooping around for? Yes, we know - you're a foreign agent." And that's what happens. It's really humiliating to say, no, I'm actually good, I'm for you. And they say, "Who do you work for?" It's terrible. I don't deserve this. It's an upside-down world. I'm tired of making excuses, and there are more and more excuses every time. It's a totally oppressive atmosphere where you're a stranger. Just a stranger in this country. The vast majority of people think otherwise - they're convinced I'm a criminal. They really believe it. And it's morally very hard to feel like a criminal in your own country every time."
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"This is not about Punin at all, not about him at all. All those people who also called me a 'spy' - they will continue to be like that, they will remain like that. I always talk about it being about 'collective Putin'. It's clear that there is repression, it's clear that people are being raped right now, like three days ago, even not only in the police station, they come home and rape them. That's all understandable. But I've traveled so much, I've talked to so many people, and I always say that 80 or 84 percent of the elections - not everybody is "pulling it," most people are "not pulling it" - people really believe Putin. I've talked to so many people: everywhere they have a good Putin. They are falling through the floor at the post office, they are dying without medicine, but Putin is good. And the Americans... even further. And it's very hard to feel so foreign in a country, just foreign. Everybody thinks differently. Almost everyone. We had a handful of fifteen people in Pskov who were around Shlosberg's team in one way or another, and they've all left, all of them. Because when we talked to many of them after they left, we agreed that they didn't need us there, they just didn't need us there.
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
"I have written a lot about medicine. Then we had a series of attacks on paramedics. And again there was utter nonsense: I was summoned to an inquiry committee and they started to torment me - who was my source for these publications. I invoked the media law, and they started saying that the media laws don't work here, and I had to name them. It was a colossal few hours of pressure. I didn't name the source. But again, I sat there in shock: I'm actually doing your job for you, you're the one who has to deal with these bloody attacks on medics, that's your investigative job. And instead you're pressuring me, the journalist who's writing about it. And it was not one, but two or, I think, three interrogations when I was dragged in. It's a completely unhealthy story.
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
Ludmila Savitska is a philologist, regional journalist for the Pskov region. She was born on 22 January 1991 in Sillamae, Estonia, where her grandmother lived, but grew up in Pechory, and graduated from the Faculty of Philology at the University of Pskov in 2013. She worked as a correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda. In 2015, she was press secretary to Lev Shlosberg, representative of the Pskov Regional Assembly, and then correspondent for the newspaper Pskovskaya Gubernia. She has written reports and articles in the social sphere of Pskov province, where she identified moments of injustice and defended ordinary people. Winner of the prestigious Sesame journalism award. After the closure of Pskovskaya Gubernia, she worked at Mikhail Khodorkovsky‘s MBCH-Media project and at Radio Liberty in the project „North, reality.“ She was threatened by representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and FSB officers for her critical publications, and her apartment was broken into. In 2019, she was granted individual status - „foreign agent.“ She appealed this status in court, claiming that she was an „agent of Russia“ and working in the interests of its people. But working in journalism became impossible: ironically, the victims themselves easily recognized that she was a „spy“. A policeman she knew secretly warned her that there was a listening device in her apartment. There was only one option left, to survive, not to go to prison and try to start a new life - to leave Russia, to go into exile, with a great inner reluctance to leave. Together with her husband Dmitri, she emigrated and lives in Prague.
Translated by automatic translator (DeepL)
Ludmila Savitska after she was assigned the status of "foreign agent", in Lev Shlosberg's office, 2020. Now all four people in the photo are "foreign agents".
Ludmila Savitska after she was assigned the status of "foreign agent", in Lev Shlosberg's office, 2020. Now all four people in the photo are "foreign agents".
