I Love Russia Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko

From a courageous young reporter, an unprecedented and intimate portrait of Russia that is also a cri de coeur for journalism that opposes the global turn towards authoritarianism

To be a journalist is to tell the truth. I Love Russia is Elena Kostyuchenko’s fearless and unrelenting attempt to document Putin’s Russia as experienced by those it systematically and brutally erases: sex workers in Moscow; queer people in the outer provinces; patients and doctors at a Ukrainian maternity ward; and reporters like herself, at risk not only because of her work but because she lives openly as a queer woman and LGBTQ activist in a deeply homophobic state.

The result is a singular portrait of a nation, and of a young woman who refuses to be silenced. In March 2022, as a reporter for Russia’s last free press, Novaya Gazeta, Kostyuchenko crossed the border into Ukraine to cover the war. It was her mission to ensure that Russians witnessed the horrors Putin was committing in their name. She filed her pieces knowing that should she return home, she would likely be prosecuted and jailed, or worse. Yet, driven by the conviction that the greatest form of love and patriotism is criticism, she continues to write, undaunted and with eyes wide open.

I Love Russia stitches together her reportage from the past 15 years with personal essays to create a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last thing she’ll publish for a long time, perhaps ever. She writes because the threat of Putin’s Russia extends beyond herself, beyond Crimea and beyond Ukraine. We fail to understand that threat at our own peril.

ELENA KOSTYUCHENKO was born in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1987, and began working as a journalist at 15. Until it was shut down in the spring of 2022 in response to her coverage from Ukraine, she spent 17 years reporting for Novaya Gazeta, which was Russia’s last major independent newspaper. She is the author of two books published in Russian, Unwanted on Probation and We Have to Live Here, and is the recipient of the European Press Prize, the Gerd Bucerius Award and the Paul Klebnikov Prize.

Author Residence: Germany

Author Hometown: Yaroslavl, Russia