I Love Russia

Starred review from August 14, 2023
In this sharp-edged debut, Kostyuchenko shares experiences from her harrowing career as a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, a Moscow-based independent newspaper. With a free-flowing style, she describes covering the war in Donbas, Ukraine, in 2004 (“I was caught in the shelling twice. I learn that I can run on all fours. I glide along in long leaps... I don’t believe I am going to die”); deplores the Putin regime; and writes about the contract killings of six colleagues, including Anna Politkovskaya, whose exposés on Putin’s Second Chechen War inspired Kostyuchenko to become a reporter. With gritty determination, she ventures beyond the Kremlin and its state-managed propaganda: she encamps in an abandoned hospital in Moscow occupied by squatters and reports on Russia’s growing homeless subculture; mingles with prostitutes in a roadside brothel; travels to the Arctic to report on the alarming numbers of Nganasan people (“the northernmost people on our continent”) committing suicide; and in the most bizarre story of the mix, tries to help a widow recover the body of her husband, who was killed during the battle for the Donetsk Airport in 2012. (Putin denied Russian soldiers were fighting in Donetsk, so the morgue denied having the body.) Throughout, Kostyuchenko’s journalistic integrity is unquestionable and the dangers she faces are very real. It’s a vivid and poignant account.