Monica

Many thanks to @MarkGaleotti for highlighting my case at the time when many act like Russian journalists in the early 2000s when Putin was clamping down on free media - look away and ignore blatant lawlessness and creeping tyranny. I’ve transcribed that segment of the podcast: “And that leads me to the case of Leonid Ragozin. First, there was the Ian Proud case that I covered previously, the British diplomat who was stopped and questioned after he came back from attending the Valdai conference. Now we have Leonid Ragozin, a Russian journalist who left Russia, has been living in Latvia, very critical of Putin and indeed of the war, but also very critical of a lot of Western policy towards it, as I would suggest is his right. It seems that he has been persona non grata-ed, expelled from the country. According to Latvian authorities, he propagated Kremlin narratives and served Russian interests. For example, they mentioned a recent column where he suggested that Ukraine would have to make painful compromises at the negotiation table. Well, the idea that Ukraine is going to have to make painful compromises is frankly generally accepted. His view is very much that the West pushes Ukraine into continuing the war… Now, I don't think that's actually the case. I think that at best one could see the West as the enabler of the continuation of the war. There's no sign that the Ukrainian state is being pushed, kicking and screaming, into continuing to fight. He is, it has to be said, something of a contrarian, and he does say things that are uncomfortable. But his position is plausible. It's an entirely legitimate line of argument. He's not just some kind of barking mad lunatic or some ardent propagator of the Kremlin line. What he says, a lot of people are saying, but not necessarily as openly, as vigorously as Ragozin, and not in the position of precarity of being a Russian citizen that has been granted the right to be in a foreign country. There is, as near as I can see, no evidence, none at all, that he is some kind of Kremlin agent, despite vicious and overheated nonsense that is being propagated by some in social media who are exulting at the fact that he's being expelled. If there were such evidence, I presume that the Latvian authorities wouldn't have just simply expelled him, but would have arrested and tried him, as the law would require. So instead we are left with a claim that he is unwittingly doing the Kremlin's work, because some of what he says mirrors Kremlin talking points. If the Kremlin says the sky is blue, are we required to say it's pink? I don't know Leonid Ragozin. I'm pretty sure I've only met him once, I think in Moscow back in 2019. I'm not questioning the legality of the Latvian government's actions, because every government has those kinds of get-out-of-jail-free clauses in their laws. But the idea that to dissent is to become a target is one that I find profoundly worrying, especially in democracies. If you think that something that someone says is wrong, then argue it. Win the debate. Don't just try and silence it. That, after all, is Putin's game. What Ragozin himself presented himself as doing is challenging groupthink, questioning orthodoxies. That can sometimes be an excuse for just being a contrarian — not saying Ragozin was doing that. But challenging groupthink is a very valuable service. It forces the mainstream to actually defend its position and makes our own information space more resilient.”