Russian Journalist, a Putin Foe, Killed in Ukraine

Oksana Baulina worked to expose corruption inside Russia
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 24, 2022 11:15 AM CDT
Russian Journalist, a Putin Foe, Killed in Ukraine
Oksana Baulina, then the chief of video operations at the foundation run by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, speaks after a live broadcast at the office of the Foundation for Fighting Corruption in Moscow, Russia, on May 16, 2017.   (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, file)

Another journalist has been killed in Ukraine, this one hailing from Russia. Oksana Baulina died Wednesday during shelling in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the BBC reports. The 42-year-old, who previously worked as a producer for jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, had been reporting for an independent Russian investigative website, The Insider, which said she was killed in a rocket strike on a shopping center in the Podil district while filming destruction in the area. One other person was killed and two others injured, per the BBC.

Baulina started her career at outlets including Time Out Moscow and In Style, per the Guardian. She "ditched a successful career in glossy magazines … to become an opposition activist, human rights campaigner, and then full-time reporter," tweeted Alexey Kovalev, an investigations editor at Russian news website Meduza, per Insider. "Incredibly brave but never reckless or irresponsible, [she was] always directing her superhuman energy to the most righteous causes." She continued to report on corruption inside Russia once the Anti-Corruption Foundation was declared an extremist group and she and other employees were forced to flee, USA Today reports.

The "funny, dedicated and extremely brave" journalist "was putting a new life together in Warsaw" and "determined to do important journalism," tweeted Guardian journalist Shaun Walker. She is at least the seventh journalist to die in Ukraine during Russia’s invasion, the BBC reports, naming Ukrainian journalists Shakirov Dilerbek Shukurovych, Yevhenii Sakun, Viktor Dudar, and Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshynova; US journalist Brent Renaud, and Irish photojournalist Pierre Zakrzewski. "We will continue to cover the war in Ukraine, including such Russian war crimes as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas which result in the deaths of civilians and journalists," the Insider said. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)

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