Q & A With a Russia Analyst
The managing editor of Meduza English, an independent Russian news outlet, discusses media coverage of the war in Ukraine
Below is an abridged transcript of my conversation with Kevin Rothrock, a Russian analyst and the managing editor of Meduza English, an independent Russian news online outlet based in Latvia. You can find him on Twitter at @KevinRothrock and he also hosts a podcast called The Russia Guy.
Rascius: First of all, how did you come to be the managing editor of Meduza English?
Rothrock: Well they launched in 2014 and they knew they wanted an English edition right off the bat. Just by word of mouth, essentially, they came to me. I began working basically as their translator. And that was several years ago. And so over the years, they brought me on for various part-time projects, and then they brought me on full-time as managing editor. Now we have a few people who are also working on the English edition with me. And so it’s just been a gradual process.
Rascius: How has it been these past few months covering the war? I’ve seen you’ve been remarkably active on Twitter.
Rothrock: Yeah, Twitter has been helpful, because it’s a good platform for people that are sort of interested in spreading images and content better and just gaining more visibility. Journalists, who run a Russian beat, gain more followers and become more relevant, even if only temporarily. Though it’s starting to fade. I think people are fatigued with the whole thing. But initially, it was extremely hectic because it was a lot of sleepless nights and I tried to stay abreast of all the breaking developments. Initially, I think I was trying to do things like posting whatever videos I could find. And then it turns out that some of them are not accurate. Some of them are from Syria or whatever. And you learn quickly, which I’m sure anybody who’s been working on conflicts before understands, that it can become a dangerous practice. So I’ve kind of fallen back more toward developments inside Russia often regarding political intrigue or civil society. So, I guess my initial compulsion was to do everything possible, and to track every bit of information that was in my feed and that kind of settled back more into doing what I know better.
Rascius: Is it difficult to report on Russia from abroad? And is it difficult to work with reporters that are based in Latvia?
Rothrock: I’ll clarify that I don’t consider myself a reporter. I mean, at best I’m a media analyst who happens to work with journalists.
Rascius: But, you’re their editor?
Rothrock: That’s a bit misleading because I’m not working with the Russian journalists and telling them what stories to cover. I’m mainly working with the translation team; deciding what to translate, how to translate it, and whether we should summarize this or that. That’s really what the English side of it is about. Also, I run the podcast too. My background is political science in history with a focus on Russia; the former Soviet Union.
Rascius: Instead of asking process questions, I’ll ask more about the substance then. How would you grade American and Western European media coverage of the war in Ukraine so far? And how might you compare it to Meduza’s coverage?
Rothrock: The western media has a lot of great reporters on the ground in Ukraine. And I don’t know if they’ve started leaving or if they’ve been getting bored. Maybe some of them already parachuted in and got out. The problem is that the western media at this point, and now the independent Russian media, which is basically just now in exile, has a big problem with access to information inside Russia. The officials themselves are reluctant to be either open with independent journalists or to talk to them at all. I mean, I know that their secretary still gives daily briefings with members of the independent media. So it’s not as though it’s a total shutdown. But, you know, there was certainly far better access 20 years ago. So that’s a detriment to the quality of information that comes out. But there are still independent journalists, and leading Russian activists living in Russia, so it’s not as though it’s a complete shutdown. It’s more that any kind of organized news can no longer fully operate inside Russia. But, there are so many journalists that go into politics and go into Georgia and Armenia and Turkey, and like that’s where a lot of the stuff is happening.
Rascius: Right, so then there’s a major access issue?
Rothrock: Definitely inside Russia and Ukraine there are some issues with getting accurate information. The Ukrainians are basically under government orders not to share specific information with anybody for fear of leaking data that could aid the Russians. So that’s a problem. And also, just in terms of the narrative, it’s difficult to say anything critical of Ukraine. I think it’s one of the pressures in the media. Anything critical of the Ukrainians is often labeled as Russian disinformation. But the job of the media is not to help Ukraine win the war, it’s to report what’s happening. And you know, there’s certainly a Do No Harm kind of aspect to it. But if there’s a story that’s already out there, and it’s potentially true, you report it with all the caveats. And so, it’s definitely a bit dicey in terms of trying to balance that Do No Harm versus reporting what’s happening.
Rascius: Something that’s often thrown in with Russian disinformation or Putin talking points is the argument that NATO expansionism in part led us to where we are now. I wonder what your thoughts are on that argument, which was probably made most notably by John Mearsheimer, but also there’s a book called “Creating Russophobia ‘’ by a Swiss journalist where he makes similar points. Is there room for any of that discussion at this time or is it all black and white?
Rothrock: I mean, that was definitely an ongoing conversation before the invasion. I don’t think anybody that has self-preservation instincts is talking about it now. If you’re going to align with Mearsheimer, that is now who you are. And there’s not a whole lot of room for arguing about that. Personally, I think that arguing NATO expansion caused the war is a pretty primitive kind of way of looking at it. The notion that Putin had no alternative is kind of silly. And if you’re a prominent media person, you do need to have a position on it. And so the only acceptable one obviously is this is a terrible, stupid war, but I guess like there’s two sides to everything. I do think, intellectually, you can have a position on the war that Putin was in the wrong but also to say that NATO expansion influenced the situation and more importantly the expansion was done with mistakes. But I think there’s not a whole lot of room for nuance right now. It’s not necessarily that important either. I mean, right now what matters is probably preventing further bloodshed or at least slowing it down. And then we can come back to intellectual conversations.
Rascius: One more about the western media, if you don’t mind. Some have taken issue with what seems to be brazen calls for escalation. I think the most prominent example was some of the pundits on MSNBC and CNN calling for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone. What do you make of that?
Rothrock: I know that Boris Johnson was confronted in Poland earlier in the war by a very emotional Ukrainian refugee. She was a journalist who had escaped. And she was weeping. And she confronted him in a press conference and said something like, we need a no-fly zone. And he said that a no-fly zone would cause World War III. And she said something like well World War III has already started. And I’m sure if your family was slaughtered in Ukraine, and your city was razed to the ground, then in your mind, it is the end of the world. In that moment, it’s like why would you ever hold back when all this violence has been unleashed? So that’s a human moment. Geopolitical analysis can be kind of callous, but obviously, people who advocate for a no fly-zone or some kind of NATO or US military intervention — those are policies that I personally think are irresponsible.
Rascius: Regarding the Russian people themselves, I believe they were blocked from accessing Meduza in early March. But, as far as I know, they can still read via the app. But, are they generally able to access independent media? And where are most of those people getting their news from?
Rothrock: Instagram has not only been banned but it’s been labeled as an extremist organization and declared illegal, which is a step further than just blocking the website. If you block a website, it’s not illegal to access that website; even the press secretary was joking in an interview recently with a Belarusian journalist that he has a VPN on his phone and he uses it to access blocked media outlets. So it’s a bit silly in regard to the way that Russia handles this. So if you get a VPN and you read that website, you’ve committed no crime, not even a misdemeanor. Even with Instagram and Facebook, when they were declared extremists, they added a special kind of stipulation saying that it’s not illegal to go visit those websites. I think for Instagram, traffic dropped from a user base of like 40 million to 30 million. So there’s still people accessing it. Also, not every internet service provider is enforcing their censorship correctly, because sometimes it requires equipment that they don’t have, or sometimes it’s just purely incompetence and a firewall isn’t particularly thorough. And also people just have VPNs. So, the blockade is pretty porous. Before the war and now, the main barrier is probably just the fact that the Kremlin controls the commanding heights of the mass media, and that would be television, but also the radio and even print journalism. And then they obviously attempt to muddy the waters of online media. All establishment media outlets are firmly in the hands of the government and even much of the newer stuff is theirs. So, it’s a mix of barriers like censorship, even though it’s incomplete, and also a collusion and control of the general supply.
Rascius: Lastly, occasionally I’ll read bits of documents or speeches from China, like Xi Jinping’s “Great Wall of Steel” speech, which was taken out of context by the Washington Post. Are there any issues with the Kremlin where things are being translated poorly or taken out of context?
Rothrock: I don’t come across that too often. I don’t know if that’s because the Kremlin pretty much translates all speeches themselves pretty quickly. But also, most of the foreign correspondents tend to speak the language. Maybe we’ll see problems emerging down the road now that most western journalists have left. But most of these people speak Russian. So, I don’t think it’s an issue.
