Mikhail Zygar

Mikhail Viktorovich Zygar (Russian: Михаи́л Ви́кторович Зы́гарь; born 31 January 1981) is a Russian born journalist, writer and filmmaker, and the founding editor-in-chief of Russian news channel TV Rain (2010–2015). Under Zygar's leadership, TV Rain provided an alternative to Kremlin-controlled federal TV channels by focusing on news content and giving a platform to opposition voices. The channel's coverage of politically sensitive issues, like the Moscow street protests in 2011 and 2012 as well as the conflict in Ukraine, has been dramatically different from the official coverage by Russia's national television stations. Zygar is also the author of the book All the Kremlin's Men (2017), the history of Putin's Russia, based on interviews with Russian politicians from Putin's inner circle. Zygar was born in Moscow, 31 January 1981. He became known as a war correspondent of Kommersant, covering wars in Iraq and Lebanon, genocide in Darfur, and revolution in Kyrgyzstan. In May 2005, Zygar was the only international journalist to report from Uzbekistan's Andijan (Andijan massacre). After that, he investigated Russian arms supplies to Uzbekistan. In August 2005, he was beaten by unknown men in Moscow, allegedly Uzbek security agents.

Between 2009 and 2010, he worked as political editor and deputy editor-in-chief of Russky Newsweek.

In 2010, Zygar became the founding editor in chief of TV Rain, the first independent TV-channel in Russia in 10 years. TV Rain rose to prominence in 2011 with its coverage of the mass protests against Vladimir Putin. Zygar organised live coverage of all the protest rallies, which were largely ignored by state-owned television. Vice News called Zygar and his team "the last journalists in Russia".

In 2012–2014, Zygar was among the group of 'leading Russian journalists' who had annual interviews with President of Russia (then Prime Minister) Dmitry Medvedev. According to an AP reporter, "Mikhail Zygar's questions were sharper than those of the others".

In 2014, TV Rain became a target of politically motivated attacks. Its troubles began when the channel was aggressively covering the daily anti-government protests in Ukraine, which state-owned television dismissed as a neo-Nazi coup. In that year, nearly all cable networks dropped TV Rain and since then the channel has been largely ignored. The channel cut its expenses in half, shed about 30 percent of its staff and reduced its monthly budget before being hit with an eviction notice. Simultaneously, TV Rain raised about $1 million in a crowd-funding campaign in March, proving that the demand for independent media in Russia is still there. The TV-channel started broadcasting from an ordinary flat in Moscow.

In December 2015, Zygar announced he would be leaving the post of chief editor. He told Kommersant that he intends to engage in his own multimedia project "1917. Free History". "I’m five and a half years running the channel, every Executive needs to expire once a period, that’s right, I gotta do something," added Zygar. But according to other independent media, Zygar's resignation could be caused by political pressure. Chief editor of Echo of Moscow radio Alexei Venediktov claimed that some high-ranking statesmen, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, were infuriated by the book and they demanded TV Rain's owner Natalya Sindeyeva to get rid of Zygar.

In 2018, Zygar has joined the Information and Democracy Commission, which has been created at the initiative of Reporters Without Borders with the intention to "mobilize all those who are committed to defending a free and pluralistic public space, which is essential for democracy".

On February 24, 2022, the day Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, Zygar launched an online petition on Facebook condemning the war. On the third day of the war, he left Russia and lives in Berlin.

Zygar writes a weekly column on Russia and the war for Der Spiegel, and a column for The New York Times.

Since April 2022, Zygar has been making a series of interviews on YouTube with "the brightest minds of humanity", including Francis Fukuyama, Robert Sapolsky, Yuval Noah Harari, Steven Pinker, Anne Applebaum, Ralph Fiennes, John Malkovich, Timothy Snyder, Karl Schlögel, Massimo Pigliucci, William Taubman, Fareed Zakaria, Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Mikhail Gorbachev.

He organized the only interview of Russian independent media with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the start of the war.