On the morning of March 31, 2025, Ekaterina Fomina waited anxiously in Berlin. She was expecting a message from her lawyer, Yulia Kuznetsova, with an update on her case. It was only the fourth session, and her lawyer had not yet been allowed to present their defence.
Then her phone flashed. It was not her lawyer, but a colleague. More notifications followed. Fomina’s name began to appear across Russian media. Within half an hour, the Moscow court handling her case had sentenced her in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for “spreading fake news” about the Russian army, one of the heaviest penalties under the law.
“I was crying a lot,” she said. “Because it is not about committing a crime and receiving a fair sentence. It is about realizing that your country calls you a terrorist.”
Berlin, where Fomina now lives, has become the informal capital of this fractured press in exile. Since the war began, hundreds of Russian journalists have relocated to the city, supported by a fragile network of advocacy groups and NGOs. From co-working spaces and temporary studios, they continue to publish and broadcast for audiences that often need VPNs to access their content. Yet safety abroad comes with a different kind of constraint: distance. The very freedom that allows them to keep speaking also severs their connection to the country they are speaking about.
The rise of Berlin as a media hub is inseparable from the collapse of independent journalism inside Russia. The transformation began in February 2022, when nearly every major outlet that reported on the invasion was blocked, branded a “foreign agent,” or forced to shut down. Article 207.3, the “fake news” law, criminalised any reporting that contradicted the Ministry of Defense.
TK Grigore Pop-Eleches / someone else on Russian media ecosystem and how it isolates and fosters distrust towards independent media
Fomina’s sentence is part of this sweeping campaign to silence independent journalists who reported on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As domestic space for journalism collapsed, the profession reassembled itself abroad. Outlets that once operated in Moscow or St. Petersburg now produce their work from Riga, Vilnius, Tbilisi, Amsterdam, and especially Berlin. TK quote on how this dynamic works
Against this backdrop, Fomina’s own reporting stands out. A former reporter for Important Stories and now a documentary producer for the Russian-language TV channel Dozhd (TV Rain), she had long expected prosecution. She had investigated war crimes in Bucha and Andreevka during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One Russian soldier confessed to her that he had killed a civilian, and she verified the victim’s identity. “There could not be any coincidences in this situation,” she said. “But the truth does not matter for this case.”
Understanding her conviction requires understanding the logic of the system that produced it. Reading the case materials, what struck her most was how easily the state could assemble a conviction. “They even did not know how to write Bucha,” she said. “They wrote it with a mistake.” When she saw that the male voiceover from the video had been attributed to her, she understood that accuracy had no place in the proceedings. “They simply did not care,” she explained.
For Fomina, this confirmed something she had sensed long before the verdict. “I actually realised how other cases are built,” she said. “There is no evidence of people’s guilt. They simply can say in the case ‘she is against the regime.’” At a certain point, the legal details barely matter because the outcome is already defined. “The decision was written in advance,” she stated.
TK on how these trials work and what consequences have on reception of the journalists’ work.
TK how some journalists are discouraged from their profession → Anastasia Kortokova (not getting credit for her work)?
Berlin’s emergence as a media center is visible in the rhythms of daily work. Reporters who once worked in established newsrooms now move between borrowed offices. A network of NGOs supports them by offering co-working spaces and financial, legal, and emotional support. For newly arrived reporters, these spaces are often the first sign that a profession still exists for them. Danila Bedyaev, who helps run the NGO MiCT’s Exile Media Hub in Grunewald, described the early months after the invasion as a period of relentless arrivals. TK more on NGO support networks. Many came with only a backpack and a laptop, unsure of how long they would stay or whether they would ever work again. Berlin offered neither stability nor guarantees, but it offered a starting point. “People could walk in and know they were not alone,” he said. For many, that mattered as much as the practical support.
Yet the city’s role is not only logistical. It has become a cultural and psychological center as well. Exiled journalists spend their days reporting on a country they cannot return to, for an audience that cannot openly read or watch them. The collapse of domestic journalism has transformed their work into something more fragmented and improvisational. Teams coordinate across time zones. Producers cut footage in Berlin from material recorded secretly in Russia. Reporters verify stories through encrypted calls, blurred screenshots, and documents sent anonymously through Telegram.
Berlin is also a place where the emotional cost of exile becomes visible. Nearly everyone describes a version of the same split. They live in one society while working entirely inside another. They follow two news cycles, carry two contexts in their heads, and write for a country whose physical landscape they no longer inhabit (change, repetitive). TK quote Anastasia Korotkova and spotlight on her.
Exile forces a reconsideration of politics and identity. TKTKTKTK. The story of Russian journalism in Berlin is not just the story of flight but of reconstruction.
In Russia, the accused disappear. In exile, Fomina found that her only defense was to keep talking.
Notes: include more journalists earlier
