Initially, about ten journalists will work at Repost.
The background to the investment is that when the war in Ukraine began, Bonnier News soon began to donate money to Ukrainian media. A foundation has since been formed in Sweden and a company has been started in Estonia.
– Since May, we have employed Russian journalists who have fled Moscow and St. Petersburg. Respons is adapted for young Russians and very designed and works a lot with visual journalism, pictures and videos. We start the site on Wednesday, says senior advisor Thomas Mattsson to DN.
Dagens Industri’s editor-in-chief Peter Fellman, also business manager for Bonnier News Business and chairman of the company AS News Bureau, will work for the independent investment’s journalism in various forms and publish Repost.
– What is going on in Ukraine and a large part of the war is about information and “journalism”. Within Bonnier News, we are super-represented in the Baltics, Poland, Finland, the entire border with Russia, Fellman tells DN.
– We happen to have Andrus Vaher (former editor-in-chief of the magazine Esquire in Moscow) with experience of running Russian newspapers and Thomas Mattsson as project manager from the Swedish side. We can only try to succeed with this media investment, says Peter Fellman before the start of Repost.
– We know that we will in various ways be exposed to attempts to close and block our online magazine for those who do not have a VPN connection. But in different ways we will really try to reach the Russian readers.
What do you think this investment will look like in a year?
– I think we have to be long-term, but in a year we have figured out how to reach Russians best so that they absorb our information, Fellman answers.
– Support for Putin has been strengthened since the war began. We need to access people so that they absorb our information.
Russia is ranked by the organization Reporters Without Borders as number 155 on the global press freedom index for 2022. There are currently no opportunities for free media to operate inside Russia. Instead, millions of Russians take part in information from the media outside the country’s borders, Repost writes in a comment.