It was a rough year for Russian independent journalism, but reporters working anonymously inside the country & remotely from exile still produced outstanding work. At Meduza, we make a point of highlighting standout stories from other outlets. Here are the 23 best of 2025.
Yuri Slezkine in the latest NYRB goes much further than a book review & explores the civilizational grounds of his own next project. I confess that his national bard obsession overwhelms me (and seems like overblown elitism), but he pulls zero punches on NATO-Russia.
Writing about "The West," Slezkine is explicitly skeptical of "the threat from Russia," which he says was Biden's focus, & he seems to embrace the idea of Western civ's decay, which could mean some affinity for Trump, but he also places Trumpism on the continuum, ie part of the problem, per se.
Alexander Dunaevsky, CEO of Kinopoisk, says the platform deleted nine films/TV shows in 2025 on orders from Russia’s federal censor, Roskomnadzor, which flagged "gay propaganda" and scenes of suicide.
