Masha Gessen on Being Convicted in Absentia by Russian Court

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, while Russian President Putin was quick to condemn Ukraine’s incursion into its territory, the Russian military has been roundly criticized for its actions throughout the war. One critic is the exiled journalist Masha Gessen, who’s recently been convicted in absentia and sentenced by a Moscow court for reporting on the conflict. They joined Michel Martin to share what it’s like to be targeted by the Kremlin and to discuss their recent New York Times behind the scenes account of the prisoner swap with Russia. Will it encourage Moscow, as we were just discussing, and other nations to keep taking hostages as bargaining chips?

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Masha Gessen, thanks so much for talking with us once again.

MASHA GESSEN, OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It’s good to see you again, Michel.

MARTIN: There’s obviously a lot to talk about, but if it’s OK, I’d like to start with something that happened to you. Last month, a Russian court convicted you in absentia for, quote, spreading false information about the Russian military. This was in an interview with a popular Russian online blogger back in 2022. You were sentenced to jail for eight years. As briefly as you can, what is it that provoked these charges? And how do you think about that?

GESSEN: Right. So, what provoked the charges was actually my reporting on Russian war crimes in Bucha. The reason that they cite the interview with the Russian blogger instead of the actual article in The New Yorker was that the article was in English and the interview was in Russian. And because they have this weird legalistic regime of repression, they actually follow some rules. And one of them is that they can’t prosecute you for something that’s not in Russian. So, they waited for me to talk about it. One of at least 255 people who have been tried or at least charged under this article, spreading false information about the Russian armed forces, most of us are charged for reporting on the war or talking about the war, and particularly talking about war crimes. But probably a majority of these people — I can’t say for sure, but probably a majority are like me, sentenced in absentia. So, we’re abroad and not in prison, but there are a number of people who are actually in prison.

MARTIN: Well, to that end, you are bilingual. You are a close follower of events in Russia and around the world. I’m sure you were aware that this was a possibility. You are obviously a very courageous person anyway, but you had to know that doing an interview in Russian would expose you to these charges to expose you to some additional harassment other than what you’ve already been experiencing. I was just wondering why you decided to do it anyway. Why did you think it was important?

GESSEN: Well, last I checked the interview had been viewed 7 million times. That’s the kind of reach in Russian that I can’t possibly hope to have or in fact, in any language, right? I don’t know how many people read the article in the paper version of The New Yorker, but I suspect that interview reached more people whom I want to have, information about Russian war crimes in Bucha than an article in The New Yorker could.

MARTIN: So, here’s what the Committee to Protect Journalists said about that. They say, the nearly yearlong prosecution of exiled journalist Masha Gessen, culminating in their conviction and sentencing is emblematic of Russian authorities’ extreme measures against independent journalists. Authorities must immediately drop all charges against them and cease Russia’s transnational repression of critical voices. You know, clearly that didn’t happen. But I am, you know, wondering, if you don’t mind my asking, if you are concerned about your safety. I mean, you’re — you do travel for your work. You do continue to operate as a journalist, both within the United States and elsewhere. And I am wondering if you’re concerned about this.

GESSEN: The trial wasn’t intended to put me in prison. They knew I was abroad. They know I live in New York. They know I work now at The New York Times. What they are trying to do is send a message to me and other journalists in exile that we are still targets. So, for me, this has some clear logistical consequences and some vague ones. The clear ones is I can’t travel to most of the world now. Countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, a lot of them either have clear extradition agreements with Russia, or at least put you at risk of being arrested and possibly extradited. So, my world has gotten a lot smaller. And for the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to get an Australian visa. Australians are somehow concerned that I’m a convict. I’m obligated to report that I have been charged and convicted of a crime. And whoever is looking at my application probably isn’t quite aware of the political situation in Russia. So, that’s sort of the clear stuff. And then there’s the vague stuff of, you know, the message you have a target on your back. I’m one of, at this point, probably thousands of people who are outside of Russia who have targets on their back.

MARTIN: Thousands of people. I think that maybe people aren’t perhaps aware of that. What is the scope of people who you think who are living — who are outside of Russia, who are basically targeted by the regime?

GESSEN: For one thing, the entire Russian independent journalism community has gone into exile. So, that’s probably thousands of people right there. There are large outlets like TV Rain, which is a great independent television station, or Meduza, which is a large online outlet. And then, there are many, many small outlets that are doing incredible reporting. I mean, what Russian journalists in exile have done to make themselves still relevant to the Russian audience in Russia, to a Russian speaking audience in Ukraine, which is a hugely important audience, right, how heroically they’ve managed to report on the war, despite having no access to either Russia or Ukraine. You know, these are really extraordinary people, extraordinary media organizations, and all of them are also working under the threat of being harassed, convicted in absentia or killed. You know, we’ve seen many Russian journalists in exile being poisoned.

MARTIN: So, to the question of your own conviction in absentia, will you fight it? Is there any mechanism to do so?

GESSEN: I think my lawyer in Russia is appealing that eventually they want to take it to an international court. So, for that, we have to exhaust all domestic remedies, which is the only reason to engage with the Russian legal system in the first place, right? It’s not a legal system. And that’s — I think that causes a lot of consternation for people like me who are in exile, because on the one hand, you don’t want to recognize the authority of a Russian court. On the other hand, you need to engage with it so that eventually you can have a decision of an international court that will, I don’t know, at least it will be on paper. I don’t know how useful it will be in any pragmatic sense.

MARTIN: One of the reasons we wanted to talk to you, obviously, is your own work, but also, we are speaking shortly after this large prisoner swap was accomplished. Involved a number of nations. Obviously, what is, I think, most visible to the American audience is Evan Gershkovich, who’s a Wall Street Journal reporter who had been in prison for more than a year. And also, a reporter for Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. I just had to ask — they were among the 24 detainees who were released in what’s been called the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War. You’ve reported on this, you’ve written about the swap for The New York Times, you trace some of the backstory. What’s your opinion of this? Because, you know, on the one hand, obviously, those of us who believe that journalists should not be held prisoner for doing their work, we’re also deeply concerned about the safety of these individuals. You know, on the other hand, there are people who feel that this increases the price. You know, it makes it more attractive to arrest and to detain journalists.

GESSEN: There’s the obvious kind of what one of my interviewees called the moral hazard versus moral imperative arguments. Moral imperative to save lives. Moral hazard, you release a Russian assassin, that encourages Russia to take more hostages if they ever need to get somebody released. It also indirectly encourages Russians — Russian assassinations abroad. And one of the people who was instrumental in organizing this whole prisoner swap, and actually conceiving of it, was Christo Grozev, this great investigative reporter, a Bulgarian born, who is now living in the United States because he’s under threat by Russian assassins in Europe and he was initially instrumental in identifying this assassin, and now, he’s helped him go free, which puts a bigger target on Christo’s back, right? So, I mean, this is incredibly complicated. There are simple parts of it, like Evan Gershkovich. Obviously, he was held hostage. Obviously, everybody’s happy that he’s free. There are more complicated parts of it, like eight Russian dissidents who did not — at least some of them, did not want to be exchanged, did not want to be released, had made a conscious decision to go to prison in Russia. Several of them have said, look, I did not ask for a pardon. I did not ask for this exchange. I did not ask to be exiled from my country. And this is a very important point. They have gained freedom and they have lost their home. They’re now, with the rest of us, much more safe, much more free than they were in a Russian prison, and also in forever exile.

MARTIN: Say more about why you think this increases the value of Russian assassinations abroad. Why so?

GESSEN: Well, here I’m going to quote Christo, who’s thought a lot about this and has worked on a lot of spy cases. One of the guarantees that the Russian regime gives its spies and its assassins is that they will be safe at home after they do what they’re sent to do. For the most part, because Russian assassins, for the most part, have not been caught, like for example, the famous assassinations carried out in the United Kingdom, the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, and then later another chemical weapon poisoning in Salisbury, I believe, those assassins have come back to Russia and are safe there, are privileged there, one of them holds high political office, right? So, that’s always been the bait. Vadim Krasikov, the assassin who was sentenced to life in Germany, was an exception. Now, that he is home along with probably five Russian spies who were released as part of the swap, now that they’re all home, Russia can say, OK, this, we will always make good on this guarantee. You can carry out these dangerous missions. And if worse comes to worse, if you’re arrested, we will still bring you home and you will still live out the rest of your lives in privilege.

MARTIN: It’s interesting because at a Trump rally Former President Trump said about the prisoner swap, I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal. Boy, we make some horrible, horrible deals. It’s nice to say we got him back, but does that set a bad precedent? I mean, look, you know, Trump is Trump, but is the insinuation here that Putin outsmarted American officials? I mean, obviously that’s what sort of Trump is trying to say, but what do you think?

GESSEN: I think Trump knows what he’s talking about. A bad faith actor will always prevail. If you have — you know, if you have somebody who’s completely ruthless, like Putin, or like Trump would be if we re-elected him, then they will bully any good faith person, any person or any system that values humanity, that values human life to any extent, right? I don’t want to idealize the United States and Germany and all the other countries who participated in the swap, but at least they place some value on human life. And the totalitarian regime in Russia places a no value in human life. And so, of course, they will always prevail.

MARTIN: But then, what’s the alternative here? I mean —

GESSEN: There’s no alternative.

MARTIN: I mean, American news organizations, not just American news organizations, but western news organizations who still feel that it is important to try to report out of Russia are still trying to operate there. You know, we worry about our colleagues every day. But what’s the alternative? It’s just to make it a black hole.

GESSEN: Right. So, I mean, there — I think there are two questions, right? What’s the alternative for a country whose citizens have been taken hostage? And I think there’s no alternative, right? You have to trade from — you have to negotiate. And you have to, as my friend and colleague, Joe Simon, told me for my story, you know, your only moral obligation is to make the best deal possible. And I think they probably did.

MARTIN: You also write about domestic politics. At a rally in Philadelphia, the Harris-Walz camp voice teams of freedom and joy and saying, we’re not going back. This is a — I think it’s fair to say a shift in tone from Biden’s message. You know, Biden’s message was more, you know, vote for me and save democracy. So, what’s your sense of the race now? Do you think that there has been, not just a shift in tone, but maybe perhaps a shift in momentum?

GESSEN: I do feel like there’s been a shift in momentum. I’m very excited about this. I think that what the Harris campaign is actually focusing on is exactly what they need to be doing, which is showing that this is a future oriented politics, instead of a past oriented politics. This is something that I’ve written a lot about. I think it’s very important to understand that all modern-day autocrats or aspiring autocrats have a past oriented politics. They all have this message, I’ll take you back to the imaginary past. And engaging with them about the past is useless. What we really need to do is engage with the future, say, look, we know you’re anxious, we know these are scary times, we know these are times of economic uncertainty and the climate emergency and great displacement and the future can be better. It can be better than today. And so, then you don’t have to dream of going back to this imaginary past. You can actually head into the future with confidence.

MARTIN: Why do you think it is that — and I say this — you’ve written extensively both about, you know, the specific events in Russia and Ukraine, their full-on invasion of Ukraine, but you’ve also been writing about kind of the rise of autocratic movements around the world, which many people for some reason have been reluctant to name as such, until I would say very recently. Why do you think these autocratic movements have become so prevalent around the world? But why do you also think it’s — we’ve been reluctant until now to name it as such?

GESSEN: So, I think they’re prevalent because, the situation I just described, the situation of uncertainty of great anxiety, really, that’s like the dominant emotion of our day. The situation is not limited to the United States. It’s a worldwide situation. And the — you know, the worldwide phenomenon of mass displacement, of mass rootlessness what Hannah Arendt called homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness on an unprecedented depth, describing the conditions for totalitarianism in the 1930s, that’s what we’re seeing around the world now. And the reason we’re afraid to name it is because in any given country there is a kind of drive to normalize. We have exceptionalized 20th century totalitarianism. We don’t want to think that what happened — what’s happening now is what happened then. But the only way to understand what’s happening now is to compare it to the past. Of course, there are differences, but there are also key and really frightening similarities.

MARTIN: You know, totalitarianism has been essentially vanquished before. Is there anything that indicates that that — that there is another movement that could defeat this modern totalitarianism?

GESSEN: You know, we’ve seen perhaps panicked reactions, but still reactions and rejections of these autocratic movements now in a few places, I think, in really inspiring ways like France. The French election looked really terrifying until suddenly the far-right was defeated. I think we may be seeing this in the United States. I’m very optimistic, but obviously, we still have three months to go to the election and anything could happen. It’s still a close call. But I think that if Harris and Walz can really embrace, on the one hand, this future, future oriented politics, and on the other hand, something that I’ve heard in Walz’s interviews that really inspires me, which is a kind of politics of care, right? I haven’t heard this in a really long time. Like, I think Biden has a politics of empathy and compassion, but Walz is a little different. He really talks about getting people fed, having people taken care of, thinking deeply about people’s home lives and how he as a political leader can make them better. Like he is actually addressing the anxieties that drive people to support leaders like Trump. And I don’t know how excited I am about the whole freedom message. I mean, it’s great. Freedom is very good, but I don’t know if that really speaks to the anxieties, because I don’t think people are anxious about losing freedom. I think people are anxious about not being taken care of. And I think if Walz can embrace that and if that can become part of the campaign, I think that’s very promising.

MARTIN: Masha Gessen, thank you so much for speaking with us.

GESSEN: Thank you for having me.