"For more than 30 years, investigative journalism has been playing a role in Russian society much bigger than it has ever had in traditional emocracies. Gorbachev’s reforms started with Glasnost (‘Openness’), when many journalists became household names. The problem was that there were no stan dards for that new Russian journalism. This hit Russian journalists badly in the 1990s, when the pro fession of investigative journalism became very dangerous. This was exploited by the Kremlin in the 2000s: Putin, the new president did not tolerate any criticism of his actions, and a new narrative was romoted – that independent investigati ve journalism could not exist, and those journalists were just paid by outside actors to attack the Russian state. In 2008, the country got a new president, Dmitry Medvedev. His push for digitalization of government services led to an unexpected development - new methods of digital investiga tions emerged, along with new teams and renewed interest among the general public. But when Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, the tide turned against journalists. Matters worsened year by year, and 2021 saw the harshest repressions against investigative journa lists to days – they were pushed out of profession and out of the country by any means necessary, the most effective tool being the wide and unscrupulous usage of the Foreign Agent Law." (FNS)