After escaping the country undetected with nearly two dozen newsroom colleagues and family members, they made their way to a refugee camp in Albania. Then, they got to work rebuilding the newsroom they had left behind.

Independent Russian media in exile are a vital line of defence against the Kremlin’s massive digital censorship project, which has an estimated budget of nearly 630 million euros, according to the latest report by The Fix and the JX Fund. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urges European states, international donors, and tech giants to step up their support for these media outlets as they face unprecedented repression and major logistical, financial, and security challenges.

The destabilisation in our information system that we woke up to in 2016 has now entered a wholly dangerous new reality: the merger of Silicon Valley and an authoritarian US state.