The U.S. granted these journalists asylum. Then it fired them.
The U.S. granted these journalists asylum. Then it fired them.
Three employees at Voice of America’s fact-checking unit fled Putin’s wrath and are now among the many journalists losing their jobs under Trump’s orders.
Martynyuk later wrote in his application for political asylum in the United States.
Martynyuk spent 10 days in prison on charges of hooliganism. His real offense, he maintains, was criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. His crime was journalism. Martynyuk, then in his mid-30s, spent years writing critical reports about Putin alongside his mentor, the well-known political opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who previously served as deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin in the late 1990s.
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When he was released from prison, Martynyuk’s lawyer suggested that he and Ekaterina relocate to the United States for a short time, so the pair left for the New York area in October 2014. Four months later, two gunmen assassinated Nemtsov while he was walking home from dinner along a Moscow bridge
“After that, I decided it would be dangerous to return,” Martynyuk recently told The Washington Post. He applied for political asylum, which the U.S. government granted two years later.
But now Martynyuk, who became a full citizen in 2024, is once again feeling the ire of a powerful government — this time, it’s the United States.
On May 30, Martynyuk was one of more than 500 Voice of America staffers terminated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the agency that oversees the government-funded news service.
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