The 'legal' tools Russia uses to ban its critics

In the documentary "Of Caravan and the Dogs," filmmaker Askold Kurov follows independent media outlets as they shut down following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Unlike other wartime films showing death and destruction on the frontline, "Of Caravan and the Dogs," co-directed by Askold Kurov and an anonymous filmmaker, was primarily shot in the newsrooms of different Russian media outlets. Yet, despite the unspectacular settings, the heartbreaking documentary allows viewers to directly witness the final nails being put in the coffin of Russia's freedom of the press.

DW met Kurov as the filmmaker was presenting "Of Caravan and the Dogs" in Berlin during the Dokumentale film festival.

Many collaborators on the project, including the film's co-director, are listed as anonymous to avoid threats in Russia. Meanwhile, Kurov has left Russia not only because of his work as a filmmaker, but also because he and his partner felt unsafe as a gay couple in their home country, where the "LGBTQ movement" has been added to the authorities' list of extremist and terrorist organizations.

The title of the film comes from Novaya Gazeta's editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov's 2021 Nobel Peace Prize speech, in which he refers to a saying that belittles the power of journalism, comparing it to dogs barking at a caravan: "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on." But Muratov believes it might work the other way around: The dogs, through their barking, may actually be the ones allowing the caravan to keep moving forward.

But what happens when all those watchdogs are silenced?

While the country's descent into totalitarianism was gradually implemented over years, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 accelerated the regime's process of restricting civil liberties.

The documentary follows how it took less than a month to stop the core activities of three media outlets — Echo of Moscow, TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta — and portrays the abrupt liquidation of Memorial, the human rights organisation documenting crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's regime.

From 'philosopher's ships' to 'foreign agents'

When Askold Kurov started filming the documentary, the filmmaker couldn't have predicted that everything would unravel so quickly.

He says that the original intention of the film was to follow different organizations and draw parallels between the Soviet Union's "philosophers' ships," steamships on which more that 200 dissident thinkers were expelled a century ago, and current state restrictions under Putin.

One of Russia's modern-day methods to stigmatize independent media and human rights organizations is to have them labeled as "foreign agents."

In one scene of the film, we see Dmitry Muratov confronting President Vladimir Putin in October 2021 about this "foreign agent" label; the Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief describes it as a "stigma" that is arbitrarily attributed to critics of the regime. "There is no warning that tomorrow you will become a foreign agent and for many, it means 'enemy of the state'," Muratov points out to Putin.

The president, through video link, congratulates Muratov for his Nobel Peace Prize, but also dismisses his concerns: "The danger of this law is highly exaggerated."

Arbitrary laws used to silence critics

Still, it is exactly based on this law that Russian authorities shut down Memorial. After being declared a "foreign agent," the human rights organization racked fines for failing to mark a number of social media posts with its official status as a "foreign agent," and had to be shut down; their offices were seized.

Addressing Stalinist crimes is a sore spot for the Russian state. "Why, instead of being proud of the country that won a terrible war and liberated the world of fascism, should we be ashamed and repent of our allegedly dark past?" is the justification authorities provide in the film for liquidating one of Russia's oldest human rights groups, which also went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

The documentary also shows how TV Rain and Echo of Moscow are shut down within a week following the invasion. They were accused by the state of "incitements to extremism and violence and false information about the operation in Ukraine," just before the Duma enacted its March 4 war censorship law that criminalized dissemination of "unreliable information" about the Russian Armed Forces that would be deemed "discrediting." That made all reporting on the war — even if describing it as a "special military operation," the term used by the Kremlin to describe its invasion of Ukraine — impossible.

Novaya Gazeta — which has had six staff members killed in the past, including Anna Politkovskaya, whose murderer was pardoned last week — managed to keep going a few weeks longer, until authorities threatened to list the daily as an extremist group. The newspaper's media license was revoked and blocked by Russian authorities.

Russian authorities have also banned Deutsche Welle from broadcasting in Russia on February 3, 2022, and labeled it a "foreign agent" in March of the same year.

Echo of Moscow, TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta have since set up newsrooms elsewhere in Europe and pursue their reporting, broadcasting mainly via YouTube and Telegram.

Although hundreds of media channels and tens of thousands of websites — including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram — have been blocked in Russia, YouTube is still running, as the Russian regime "needs it as well as a channel of their own propaganda," explains Kurov.

Still, the general population mainly avoids European-based broadcasters: "Meanwhile, on top of the 'foreign agent' label, we now have in Russia 'undesirable' organizations," points out Kurov, referring to a 2015 law that was tightened in August 2024. "Cooperating with an 'undesirable' organization is a crime. You can be imprisoned because of this, but nobody knows exactly what cooperation means," he adds. 

"So sure, if you want, you can find any information," explains the exiled filmmaker, but "for many people in Russia, it's maybe more convenient to accept the information they get from state media. We even have this Russian saying: If you know less, you sleep better."

Russia flooding other countries with propaganda

Meanwhile, Russia knows the power of propaganda and uses it widely in countries where information circulates freely.

Germany in particular is being flooded with more disinformation than ever, experts have recently warned, leading to weakening support for Ukraine among the population.

"I know that Russian propaganda is very powerful," says Askold Kurov, adding that he however didn't expect pro-Russian narratives to be so readily adopted in Germany. He knew that Russia's viewpoints would easily be endorsed by the population in former Soviet territories, "where people still have some buttons in their mindset that are easy to push. But I'm surprised that it also works for people in the West. It's sad."

Warning against this propaganda, and hoping that documentaries can serve as an "antidote," he hopes the West will continue to support Ukraine — and that they will win. Even though it's difficult to remain optimistic after two and a half years of war, he maintains: "We have to keep hope and not accept any compromise evil offers us."

Edited by: Brenda Haas