‘Blame the Russian Federation’ Journalist Irina Slavina’s self-immolation came after years of constant pressure from the authorities
5:14 pm, October 2, 2020Source: Meduza
“For my death, please blame the Russian Federation,” Koza.Press editor-in-chief Irina Slavina wrote on her Facebook page during the afternoon of October 2. A few moments later, Slavina set fire to herself near the police headquarters in Nizhny Novgorod. She died at the scene from the resulting burns. She was 47 years old.
Irina Slavina was a well known journalist in Nizhny Novgorod. She earned a philology degree and worked as a Russian language and literature teacher for several years. Her journalistic career began in 2003, when she landed a job at the leading regional newspaper, Nizhegorodskaya Pravda. In the spring of 2015, Slavina, having lost her job for the third time (for “poking my nose out too far,” she said in an interview four years later), founded the online publication Koza.Press.
“I never dreamed of having my own media outlet. This idea was born spontaneously. I think I couldn’t avoid getting fired – [if] not today, then tomorrow. There are things that I don’t tolerate. It’s no secret that there’s total censorship in the Nizhny Novgorod Region,” she said at the time, in an interview with the outlet Pravda PFO. The project is funded by donations. Slavina ran it on her own: she was “both a correspondent, and a managing editor, and a cameraman.” She wrote about the persecution of the opposition, the crimes of law enforcement officers, and the illegal purchases of the city administration. Some reports say that Koza.Press was quoted more often than the city’s major publications.
