In 2012 Masha Gessen, then editor of Russia’s longest-running magazine Vokrug Sveta, refused to send a reporter to cover Russian President Vladimir Putin hang-gliding with endangered Siberian cranes that were being released into the wild. Declining to aid in another stage-managed depiction of Putin as a man of both action and compassion cost Gessen their job.
Within a year Russian authorities had started openly talking about taking away gay parents’ children (one politician referred to Gessen, a longtime LGBTQIA+ activist in Russia, by name in the debate) in addition to passing legislation about “homosexual propaganda”.
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