The Russian government revoked the citizenship of ICIJ member and IStories founder Roman Anin in December, accusing his outlet of fabricating reports on war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Yet Anin, who was born in Moldova and acquired Russian citizenship in 2006, remains steadfast in his reporting.
“It will not affect my work in any way,” he told ICIJ.
The decision to revoke his citizenship came after Anin and his former IStories colleague Ekaterina Fomina were sentenced in absentia last year to 8.5 years in prison after reporting on Russian soldiers who killed Ukrainian civilians in the town of Andriivka, near Kyiv, in 2022. As part of the investigation, a Russian officer confessed to Fomina that his commander ordered the soldiers to kill the residents. IStories also identified paratroopers who were in the town of Bucha during another deadly massacre of Ukrainian civilians.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a nongovernmental organization that monitors press freedom violations, called the revocation of Anin’s citizenship an act of “transnational repression by the Russian state against journalists and independent media.”
“By stripping Anin of his citizenship, the Kremlin is not merely punishing dissenting journalism — it is escalating a strategy of intimidation that reaches journalists in their places of exile,” Jeanne Cavalier, head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, wrote in a statement to ICIJ.
“[The] Kremlin is not merely punishing dissenting journalism — it is escalating a strategy of intimidation that reaches journalists in their places of exile.”
— head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk Jeanne Cavalier
The citizenship dispute is not Anin’s first clash with Russian authorities. In 2021, Federal Security Service officers raided his home after he wrote about a luxury yacht used by the wife of one of Vladimir Putin’s allies. He left the country shortly after the incident and has not returned to Russia since. Then, the Russian government designated Anin as a “foreign agent.” In 2022, the government designated IStories as an “undesirable” organization, criminalizing any collaboration with the outlet or interaction with its content.
As part of its efforts to suppress negative coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Russian parliament adopted two laws in 2022 criminalizing the spread of “fakes” and the act of “discrediting” the army. Then, in 2023, the government passed a law allowing the revocation of acquired citizenship for the same offenses.
Though Russian authorities have attempted to restrict Anin’s work countless times over the years, it is clear that “repressions are intensifying,” he said.
Russia fell to its lowest ranking in the RSF press freedom index in 2025 amid its most intense crackdown on independent media since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia was second only to China in the number of reporters behind bars.
Despite the Russian government’s pressure campaign against independent media, IStories is on a mission.
“Imagine history without all the facts,” Anin said. “We are preserving the history, and this is one of the major roles that we play.” Anin referenced the outlet’s coverage of Russian authorities’ deportation of Ukrainian orphans in occupied territories as an example.
Anin said that the government is using passport denials and citizenship revocations as a “weapon against its opponents,” but he is not entirely dissatisfied with what has happened to him.
“Look at what Russia is today. It’s a country that is bombing Ukraine … committing horrible war crimes every week,” Anin said. “If such a state revokes someone’s citizenship, well then it means that I’m on the right side of history.”