[_tunic_]

second part:




stress

Son Tom on the line. Under the stress as well. Tom (33) is married to Olga (33). They have an adorable two-year-old daughter, our grandchild Charlotte. Life smiled at them too. Born in Vladivostok, Olga is a doctor at the university hospital. Tom has set up a company that builds and operates sports fields. And a football academy. With eighteen football and ice hockey stadiums, he is the biggest player in Moscow. I am proud of how he managed to do that in eight years, with four hundred staff now.

When I say they succumbed to the propaganda, they answer that I was brainwashed by America
Tom, Son of Derk Sauer

But Tom wants to leave. Now. "What's happening here really disgusts me," he says, "I don't want our daughter growing up in a country full of lies." His management is strongly against the war, but there are several people in his staff for it. “However I argue, they remain behind Putin. And they simply deny that Russia is bombing cities in Ukraine. When I say they have succumbed to the propaganda, they answer that I was brainwashed by America. It's maddening.”

That is why Tom has also stopped as captain of his football team. There were also two Putin boys among them. ,,We couldn't have fun anymore, we danced around the hot mess. The whole society is falling apart.”

Olga has studied hard for years and just completed her training as an endocrinologist. Her work is a five-minute walk from their spacious flat in one of Moscow's finest neighborhoods, close to the Moscow River and Gorky Park. Charlotte goes to the nursery, where she loves it.

Leaving all that behind – her friends, her career (the Russian diplomas are of no use to her in the Netherlands), her mother. It's a hard laugh and I admire Olga that she goes without protest.

As the hours tick by, I zoom with Dima, the editor-in-chief of our Russian service. We also published VTimes – a Russian platform that was declared a “foreign agent” last May and had to close. At the end of 2021, we therefore launched a Russian version of our English-language publication Moscow Times. On Friday night I decided to black out that site. Then Putin signed a law rushed through the Duma at lightning speed.

Officially we could not use the words 'war' and 'invasion' and we were only allowed to post official messages from the defense ministry about the 'special military operation' as the war is euphemistically called in Russia. We did not follow these rules. Our journalists broke the law. As of last week, you could face up to 15 years in prison for spreading what the authorities call fake news – but which in reality is giving facts. I did not think it justified to expose my Russian journalists to that risk.


Lights off

The past few years have been very difficult for Russian journalists, but in the past week the lights literally went out. The internet TV station Dozhd (also known as TV Rain) was taken off the air, the famous radio station Ekho Moskvy as well, local media in the Russian regions threw in the towel and Novaya Gazeta - the newspaper of Gorbachev co-founded Nobel Peace Prize winner Dimitri Muratov - decided to cease all coverage of the war.

Facebook and YouTube, where citizens and bloggers could express their displeasure, have been shut down and the BBC has been thrown off cable. What remains is a 24/7 mess of propaganda and disinformation.

Only Telegram still works and editor-in-chief Dima cheerfully reports that we are now on the air via Telegram. In the images taken by our reporters on the ground, I see that thousands of Russians across Russia have heeded the call of the imprisoned opposition leader Navalni to demonstrate against the war. The number of arrests already stands at five thousand today. What courage.

This is about the future of our children
Dima, Editor-in-Chief The Moscow Times

I also read that more than 150 journalists have left Russia since the outbreak of the war. I am now one of them. Aeroflot's last flight to Istanbul – the aircraft are no longer allowed to fly internationally for fear of being detained abroad – is packed. Not the usual holidaymakers, but families with a lot of suitcases who are looking elsewhere for the time being.

My timeline is full of offers to help set up an emergency editorial office for The Moscow Times in the Netherlands. Heart warming. Our journalists want to continue. Right now. They are willing to leave home, family and children behind. Editor-in-chief Dima – herself born in Ukraine and raised in Russia – says: “This is about the future of our children.”



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Short biography. Check his wiki page for a bit more, the Dutch is a bit more detailed than the English


Derk Sauer (69) is married to Ellen Verbeek, editor-in-chief of the Russian Cosmopolitan and Yoga Journal in Moscow. Son Tom is a successful entrepreneur in Moscow, Pjotr ​​is a journalist at The Guardian, Berend works at a green investment fund. Except for Pjotr, the family has been in the Netherlands since this week.

Sauer started out as a journalist for several magazines. He became editor-in-chief of Nieuwe Revu in 1982. Sauer left for Russia in 1989, where he became one of the founders of Independent Media, publisher of The Moscow Times and numerous Russian-language magazines. He sold that company to Sanoma in 2005.

In 2012, Sauer became a director at the Russian online media company RBK. He came under fire there in 2015 after reporting about Putin's wealth. He bought back The Moscow Times in 2017 and added a Russian-language version to it.

This month he temporarily took the site off the air after the introduction of a new media law. Sauer is trying to move the editors to the Netherlands and is temporarily housed at DPG Media, publisher of this newspaper.


Note:
The English version of the Moscow Times is still alive: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/