Nobel prize winner Muratov: The war doesn't sell in Russia

Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the Russian Novaya Gazeta newspaper who shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, spoke about the media landscape in his home at DW's Global Media Forum in the German city of Bonn on Tuesday. 

"Since the word 'war' is forbidden in Russia, and the word 'hell' is still allowed, I will use the word 'hell,'" he said, in reference to the Russian law forbidding media outlets from calling the conflict in Ukraine a war and insisting they use the Kremlin's preferred term, special military operation. 

He said during his speech that one clear example of this "hell" was "the dismantling of the judicial system," particularly when it came to prosecuting media houses or opposition forces or NGOs. 

He mentioned several examples, saying the fate of political prisoners in Russia had been his main motivation to attend. 

He called for help to "stop the torture of Alexei Navalny," Russia's jailed opposition leader, and mentioned a local politician, Alexei Gorinov, who received a more than seven-year prison term for speaking up against the war. 

Muratov also expressed support for "our colleague," American journalist Evan Gershkovic, who is accused of espionage by Russian authorities and facing a closed trial. 

'The world must hear this sound of war'

The presence of a Russian journalist at the GMF, even one so renowned for critical coverage of Vladimir Putin's regime, had prompted criticism from some quarters in Ukraine and elsewhere.

During his speech on Tuesday in Bonn, air raid sirens sounded briefly in the conference hall and a voice could be heard saying words to the effect of "take cover" in Ukrainian, in what turned out to be a provocation by Ukrainian journalists attending the conference. Muratov reacted calmly to the action that lasted for one minute and didn’t interrupt his speech. Some of the audience members also shouted "Glory to Ukraine" as he finished his speech. 

"While I was standing on the podium, I thought it was a technical problem," Muratov told DW in a statement three days after the speech, "No, it was not a technical problem. If I knew what it was, I would have interrupted my speech and asked to make the sound of the siren even louder. The world must hear this sound of war, and for that, any place is appropriate."

Muratov has long been critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in the summer of 2022, he auctioned off his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize medal.

It raised more than $100 million for a UNICEF fund for Ukrainian children impacted by the war. It's the highest price a Nobel medal has ever commanded, although admittedly selling them is not a very common occurrence.

He called for more support for UNICEF on Tuesday in their efforts to reunite Ukrainian children with "their parents and their homeland." 

Muratov said one tragedy of the war was that "never again will Ukraine and Russia be together, these peoples will never be fraternal peoples, particularly while one brother still always considers himself the elder." 

He also said that for many Russians, it had brought a "great geographical discovery" and grim realization: "Russia is no longer Europe. The window to Europe is closed and bars have been installed on it." 

Nobel laureate for newspaper-in-exile

Muratov lamented the dismantling of Russia's critical media, which had long been in the minority in the national media landscape but has been more actively persecuted in recent years. He said it was part of efforts to obscure the failures of Putin's leadership from the public. 

"You can realize the scale of the tragedy if you see it," Muratov later told DW's Juri Rescheto, but argued the Kremlin was trying to ensure that ordinary Russians could not.

"Propaganda needs monopoly — all alternative sources of information were closed in Russia. Most journalists are expelled. Thirty percent of almost 300 people designated 'foreign agents' in Russia are journalists." 

Novaya Gazeta is one such publication. It left Russia last year as laws pertaining to coverage of the war in Ukraine intensified. It now operates out of Riga under the masthead Novaya Gazeta Europe, and its website was banned in Russia soon after its overseas relaunch.

"All investigative startups, big [publications] independent of the Russian state media like Meduza, Echo of Moscow, TV Rain, Novaya Gazeta are either closed or in exile. This is why propaganda is a monopoly. And if Russia's authorities manage to ban YouTube, Telegram, Wikipedia, propaganda will fulfill its mission, will become a monopolist — and then it will be incredibly easy to rule the country," Muratov said. 

He said that internet companies, not least VPN providers, had a particular responsibility as their importance for Russians seeking information from abroad balloons. 

Young broadly oppose the war, but the old support it, Muratov believes

Muratov sought to argue that Putin's grip on people was waning. He said that 482 days into the invasion, even the war's supporters were starting to question both the reasons underpinning it and the progress in the field. 

However, he also acknowledged that "of course Putin has support" and that "nobody has ever stayed in power" without some popular support. 

"I can tell you the figures: about 80% of people under the age of 35 are against the special military operation, they want peace as soon as possible. But about the same number of elderly people demand victory." 

He had played on the same perceived generational divide in his keynote GMF speech, saying: "this generation is building the future, while the authorities in Russia are trying to improve the past." 

He said as a personal sociological experiment, he would check online prices for clothing with the pro-war or pro-military symbols like V or Z on them each week. According ot Muratov, "they have dropped in price by approximately 85%" since the invasion.

"The war doesn't sell," he concluded. 

Juri Rescheto, the head of DW's Riga bureau, and Andrey Gurkov from DW's Russian language service contributed to this report.

Edited by Jenipher Camino Gonzalez

This article was updated on June 23, 2023, to include a comment from Muratov regarding the air raid siren sounds played during his speech at the GMF.