Carola Schneider has been in Moscow since 2011, with occasional breaks, but now she is being forced to leave the country. The Russian Foreign Ministry has revoked the accreditation of the head of the ORF-Correspondent offices in Moscow, meaning they are no longer allowed to report and must depart from Russia soon. Following the recent expulsion of Maria Knips-Witting, there are currently no ORF journalists remaining in Russia.
The ORF has condemned this decision as an “arbitrary act against independent reporting,” while the Austrian Foreign Ministry has called it “unprecedented” and deemed it “unjustified and unacceptable.” The Russian Federation’s embassy has been notified of the protest against this action. Carola Schneider, who is originally from Vorarlberg, has been reporting from the Moscow office highly competently for many years and has always followed all laws. She will continue reporting on Russia from the foreign editorial office in Vienna, like Knips-Witting, while the ORF seeks new accreditations.
This development comes after the ORF was made inaccessible from Russia a day earlier. In response to the EU banning four Russian propaganda media outlets, Moscow blocked access to 81 EU media outlets, including the ORF and eur24. Additionally, the trial against journalist Evan Gershkovich from the Wall Street Journal, who has been imprisoned for 15 months on suspicion of espionage, began on Wednesday.
In Russia, many media outlets critical of Vladimir Putin’s policies are prohibited, and thousands of websites are blocked on the Internet. Similar to the restricted European media outlets, these websites can only be accessed via a VPN server to bypass the restrictions. Numerous journalists have been imprisoned in Russia for accusations of discrediting the Russian army.