One cold December evening in Moscow, a sullen, bearded man stood next to a busy subway station, a green hood pulled over his head, wearing mittens. He held a poster which read “Freedom to political prisoners.”
The man was Ilya Azar, an award-winning Russian journalist with the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, who in recent months had added another line to his resume: activism.
Azar is not the first journalist, in Russia or elsewhere, to walk the fine line between reporting, advocacy, and politics, but he has taken that balancing act to a whole new level. Azar helped organise the protest rallies which shook the Russian capital last summer, campaigned for the release of jailed activists, and raised money to help other activists pay fines.
