The Insider journalist Marfa Smirnova, a former host of Dozhd, who lives in Georgia, spoke on Instagram about receiving anonymous threats and spying on relatives who remained in Russia.
After the suspension of Dozhd in March 2022 due to pressure from the Russian authorities, Smirnova moved to The Insider and made news releases for the publication’s YouTube channel. In the spring of 2023, she wrote a report from Kherson, liberated by Ukraine. According to Smirnova, she has been receiving anonymous threatening messages since April 2023.
“If at first it was some unsurprising messages from different telegram numbers for me, now everything has gone too far,” the journalist describes the situation. — They send me photos of relatives, their travel routes, information about them, which has never been and cannot be in the public domain. It was quite scary to get an audio recording of a wiretapping of an apartment in Moscow.”
According to Smirnova, she does not know exactly what the authors of the threats want from her. The journalist accompanied the post with a screenshot of one of these messages, where she is required to “[not] write about what is not necessary.” ; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% — 2px ); width:calc(100% — 2px);»> View this post on Instagram