Anastasia Tjumakova lives with her husband, three cats, a hen and rooster, goat and two dogs in a tent. It is the only housing option that she can afford.
– I choose not to say which state I live in for my own safety. Information about me has already been published by pro-Russian bloggers, she says.
Thus Astra was born
When Russia entered Ukraine on February 24 last year, Anastasia Tyumakova was unemployed. A month or so earlier, she had been fired in New York from RTVI, an international Russian media platform, after criticizing the channel’s choice of news on its social media.
With the war, Tyumakova’s phone began to fill up with photos and videos from her friends and acquaintances in Ukraine.
– I started publishing it in my private Telegram channel and the interest in it started to grow. At the same time, new laws came into effect in Russia that forbade spreading the truth about the war. Then I got the idea to create my own news channel, says Anastasia Tjumakova.
Works around the clock
Astra was born on March 5. At first, Tyumakova worked together with another journalist.
– I worked when she slept and she worked when I slept. After a couple of months there were three of us. Then my husband joined and for just over a year we were four people. Today there are seven of us, she says.
Tyumakova works at night in Moscow. In this way, Astra publishes news around the clock.
News mixed with own revelations
Astra produces news on Telegram for its roughly 150,000 followers. Several independent Russian media outlets created after the war, such as Projekt and Vjorstka, can be compared to magazines. Astra works more like a daily newspaper where news is mixed with its own investigative journalism.
– I am most proud that in collaboration with Meduza we were the first to tell about how Russian soldiers murdered and raped civilians in the Kiev region right at the beginning of the war. In another important audit, we found basements where Russian soldiers who refuse to fight are held captive, says Anastasia Tjumakova.