Lyubov Barabashova, a freelance correspondent for Radio Liberty on Sakhalin, has become a laureate of the annual Pyotr Vail Free Russian Journalism Scholarship.
Barabashova graduated from the Faculty of History and Sociology of Sakhalin State University. She has been collaborating with Radio Liberty since 2016 and with the Sibir.Realii project since 2017. Author of dozens of materials about daily life, political and social problems on Sakhalin.
At the end of last year, Russian authorities recognized Barabashova as a “foreign agent.” The journalist considered such a decision in relation to many representatives of the Russian press unfair.
The Pyotr Weil Scholarship “Free Russian Journalism” was established in 2009 in memory of the famous writer and longtime employee of the Russian Service in the year of his 60th birthday. The winner of the scholarship is the best freelance correspondent of Radio Liberty, according to the editors.
- Pyotr Vail (1949-2009) – a well-known Russian prose writer, publicist, essayist, radio journalist – spent over 20 years at the microphone of Radio Liberty, first as a freelancer, and since 1989 as a permanent employee of the New York Bureau of Radio Liberty. In 1992, he headed the bureau in New York, since 1995 he has been an employee of the Prague edition of the Russian Service, assistant director of the Russian Service for Information Broadcasting. In the last years of his life, he served as editor-in-chief of the Russian Service.
- The Russian service of Radio Liberty, part of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) media corporation, began operations in 1953. The office in Moscow was opened in 1991 by decision of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty announced the closure of its bureau in Russia on March 6, 2022. Two days earlier, the Federal Tax Service filed a claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court for the forced bankruptcy of RSE/RS LLC, which represents the interests of the media corporation in Russia. These actions, as the management of the media corporation said at the time, represented the culmination of a years-long campaign to obstruct the work of Radio Liberty and other Russian-language RFE/RL projects.
- The technical reason for the bankruptcy of RSE/RS LLC was the decision of the media corporation not to pay the fines imposed by the Russian authorities for refusing to accompany each journalistic material with an indication that the media corporation was included in the list of “foreign agents”. The total amount of fines issued by Roskomnadzor since January 2021 has exceeded $15 million. More than 30 journalists collaborating with RFE/RL have been included by the Russian Ministry of Justice in the list of “foreign media agents”.
- Websites of RFE/RL Russian-language projects, including those of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service, were blocked by Roskomnadzor for refusing to remove information about a Russian military incursion into a neighboring country. Despite the blocking, 2022 turned out to be the most statistically successful year for Svoboda: our websites registered more than 160 million visits, Svoboda’s videos are hosted YouTube have been viewed nearly 2 billion times.
- In December 2022, the Russian service of Radio Liberty introduced a new audio platform on a specialized video hosting channel YouTube Radio Svoboda Live.
