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Sergey Smirnov, Mediazona's editor-in-chief.
Independent Russian publication Mediazona has laid off staff and reduced salaries due to a lack of funding, its editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov and editor Dmitry Treshchanin announced in a joint statement on Monday.
A fundraising campaign launched in September around the outlet’s 10th anniversary failed to reach its goal of 5,000 subscribers, leaving the Mediazona with “no other choice” but to cut staff and lower salaries in order to continue operating, Smirnov said, adding that he and Treshchanin had taken themselves off the payroll in order to avoid making further cuts.
In a separate editorial, Mediazona warned such measures would become necessary unless subscriber numbers increase:
“Before the invasion, our funding model was brutally simple: we relied almost entirely on reader donations. By early 2022, nearly 10,000 Russian supporters contributed to Mediazona every month. Thanks to them, we grew from a small publication focused on courts and prisons into a newsroom producing major investigations, documentaries, and breaking news across multiple platforms.
Then, overnight, it collapsed. When Visa and Mastercard pulled out of Russia, so did our funding from our readers. Last September, we warned that 2025 would be a battle for survival. That moment has arrived: to keep publishing, we need 5,000 subscribers.”
When the call for help went out on March 31, Mediazona noted that “more than 2,600 people have stepped up to support us so far.” As of April 1, the outlet has just over 3,900 subscribers and said its reader-funded model is its only sustainable option going forward, with “basically no alternative.”
“Without your help, the Mediazona you know today will be gone,” the editorial team wrote, calling on readers to donate to save the publication.
Founded in 2014 by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Pyotr Verzilov — all of them members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot — Mediazona is focused on reporting on Russia’s judicial and prison systems, human rights abuses, and political repression. The “zona” in its name is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Russian slang term for a prison camp or penal colony, coined during the Soviet era.
Throughout its existence, Mediazona has repeatedly faced pressure from the authorities. In 2018, the outlet was nearly blocked over its publication of an investigation by Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. In 2020, its website was blocked in Belarus for its coverage of the protests against the falsified presidential election that saw Alexander Lukashenko claim a sixth consecutive term in power, with the authorities in Minsk labeling its content as “extremist.” In 2021, Russia’s Ministry of Justice designated Mediazona, its editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov, and publisher Pyotr Verzilov as “foreign agents.” In March 2022, Mediazona’s website was fully blocked in Russia. Dmitry Treshchanin was labeled a “foreign agent” in November last year.
Smirnov faces up to two years in prison in Russia if convicted in a criminal case that was launched in December 2024. He is accused of failing to label his content in accordance with Russia’s “foreign agent” law and was recently placed on the country’s wanted list by the police. Smirnov fled to Lithuania in 2022 after serving a jail sentence the previous year over a retweet.
Among Mediazona’s most prominent projects is its ongoing, independently verified death toll of Russian soldiers in Ukraine — an open source data investigation produced in collaboration with BBC News Russian and a team of volunteers. Last week, the outlets announced that their count of verified Russian battlefield fatalities topped 100,000.
Since the start of the invasion, Mediazona has also been a key source for reporting on Russian court cases. It was named the most cited independent Russian outlet in 2024 by media monitoring group The True Story.