Elena Kostyuchenko on I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country

On Friday, November 3, 2023, as part of the European & Russian Studies Community Lunch Seminar series, the European Studies Council at the Yale MacMillan Center, The Poynter Fellowship in Journalism at Yale, and the Slavic Colloquium hosted Elena Kostyuchenko, a prize-winning Russian independent journalist and author. Marci Shore, Associate Professor of History (Yale) moderated a conversation with Andrei Kureichyk, a Belarusian dissident and writer in exile, and Nari Shelekpayev, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures (Yale).
“Opinions and statements expressed by event moderators and participants are their own personal views and do not represent the views of the university.”
To be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko’s unrelenting attempt to document her country as experienced by those whom it systematically and brutally erases: village girls recruited into sex work, queer people in the outer provinces, patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward, and reporters like herself.
Bio: Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian independent journalist. For 17 years she was a special correspondent of Novaya Gazeta, till the newspaper was shut down under the pressure of Russian authorities in March 2022. She reported on conflict, crime, human rights and social issues. Kostyuchenko was among the first to prove the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. She covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the second day of the war. Now she collaborates with the independent Russian exiled media Meduza. Her book «I love Russia» will be released on 17 October 2023. Her work was acknowledged with multiple awards including European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award-Free Press of Eastern Europe, and Paul Klebnikov Prize.