For 10 years, we’ve fought censorship to bring you the truth about Russia To celebrate this milestone, we’re sharing 20 things you probably didn’t know about Meduza
For the past 10 years, we’ve covered Russia and beyond, despite the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to silence us. To mark this milestone, we wanted to share a bit about ourselves with you, our readers. Over the past few days, you may have noticed a few pop-ups with these stories — funny, heartwarming, and sometimes difficult moments. Now, we’ve gathered them here so you can read them all in one place.
1. Why the name ‘Meduza’?
Meduza got its name by accident. The person who came up with it meant to suggest the Lernaean Hydra, the many-headed water-dwelling monster of Greek mythology. If one head was cut off, two more grew in its place. But everyone loved the word Meduza so much that we kept it. We later came up with various stories to explain the name, but the simple truth is that we just liked how it sounded.
2. Our colors reflect where we put down roots
The first Meduza logo featured the Medusa Rondanini, an ancient Roman marble statue of the Greek monster Medusa (the one with snakes for hair). Later, our art director suggested that we not fixate on a face (even such an excellent one), and just stick with a catchy font and our favorite colors: black earth and Baltic sand. Now, sadly, we’ve had to give up even this. We try to use our logo as little as possible since it might cause problems for our readers in Russia, where we’ve been completely outlawed.
3. You have to pass a (pleasant) test to join Meduza
At Meduza, new employees go through a unique initiation rite. They have to eat Riga sprats on rye bread, take a shot of Riga Balsam liqueur (or the black currant version, which isn’t so bitter), and say “Laipni lūdzam!” which means “Welcome!” in Latvian.
4. We have an ‘attack mode’
Our editors have an informal protocol for major breaking news — we call it “attack mode.” When this mode gets invoked, everyone drops what they’re doing and helps cover the main event. This means every Meduza employee works the news, regardless of what they were hired to do. It’s become tradition to label every major event “attack mode” — from plane crashes to Prigozhin’s attempted military coup to Alexey Navalny’s death. It seems like bad news tends to break on Friday nights, but that’s the least of our problems — especially since the Kremlin imposed military censorship in 2022.
5. Again, we don’t love Fridays
We found out that our founder and editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko’s phone had been hacked with Pegasus spyware on the very same evening Yevgeny Prigozhin launched his mutiny. Naturally, it was a Friday night — because of course it was. (It was also Līgo, the summer solstice holiday in Latvia, where we’re based.)
6. But we do love animals. Even spiders.
Meduza employees share their homes with 26 cats, 32 dogs, one horse (yes, a horse), and one turtle (because, why not?). This is the most up-to-date count — as you can imagine, it changes frequently. We’ve also taken it upon ourselves to feed three seagulls, two ravens, a feral cat, a spider that lives on a windowsill, and a lizard named Georgy.
7. We give other journalists Riga balsam
Every year, we give our own small award — a bottle of Riga balsam, a regionally famous liqueur — to colleagues from other publications, for what we think are their best articles and projects. Our office always keeps a few bottles on hand, just in case a winner drops by to claim their prize. We also give out monthly internal awards, simply called “the bottle,” though for some reason, we don’t actually give out a bottle of anything for those. None of it really makes sense.
8. We’d love to make a dark mode for our site
If we reach 33,000 recurring donors again — the number we had every month (!) until February 2022, when we lost the ability to collect donations from Russia — we promise to create a dark mode theme for the site. It already exists on our app, which has built-in tools against government blockers and works inside Russia without a VPN.
9. We’re always under attack
In 2024, we haven’t gone a single month without facing a DDoS attack. The largest hit came in April, when our servers were bombarded with two billion requests. We survived, thanks to our amazing tech team. An attack like that costs whoever orchestrated it several hundred thousand euros. If we had that kind of money to burn, there’s a lot of good we could do with it.
10. The app came first
Ten years ago we decided our motto would be “mobile first.” We built an app before we even started designing the website (not the other way around). That means the Meduza app has been around as long as the publication itself! What’s especially impressive is that because of the app, we’re accessible in Russia without a VPN. A huge thanks to our wonderful tech team!
11. We call ourselves a ‘little pirate ship’
We have a piece of art by the artist Val Chtak that travels with us from office to office — or to someone’s home, when there is no office. The artwork is made up of panels, with the main piece featuring a black flag and the words in Latvian, “Understand, you don’t owe anyone anything.” Other panels include inscriptions in Russian: “Fear nothing,” “Never complain,” and “Always speak the truth.” These phrases have become our editorial mottos. The black flag is Meduza’s unofficial symbol. It’s no coincidence that in 2014, when we started up, we called our publication a “little pirate ship.”
12. Our English team isn’t English
We call Meduza in English “English Meduza” for short. But in the nine years that English-language (to put it correctly) Meduza has been around, we’ve never had a Brit on staff — only Americans, Canadians, and Russians. It just turned out that way.
13. We don’t just report the news — we help the people affected
In the 10 years we’ve existed, Meduza has provided direct assistance to charitable and human rights organizations over 300 times. In 2024, we joined forces with colleagues at other publications to raise funds for civilians in Ukraine and political prisoners in Russia.
14. We report from all around the world
Immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, we had to evacuate all of our employees still based in Russia, who risked criminal prosecution for their work. Despite this, we continue to publish on-the-ground reports from Russia and Ukraine, as well as Armenia, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Morocco, Poland, Serbia, Turkey, Switzerland, Estonia, and even Iran. Support us so that we can continue this work.
15. Our photo editors see the worst of humanity
During the war, our photo editors have shouldered the heaviest professional burden. Every day, they sift through hundreds of images from the front, processing an overwhelming amount of pain and suffering. Without their work, we wouldn’t be able to show you the full picture of daily life in Russia, Ukraine, and around the world.
16. We have a story we’ll only publish after the war ends
Our Explanatory Desk helps us break down issues that frequently affect our lives, but that’s not all it does! On February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we were planning to run an extremely practical explainer titled “How to remove an avocado pit.” This piece has since become a sort of symbol for the future — we’ve decided we’ll publish it on the day the war ends.
17. We’re putting together a playlist
Over the past decade, we’ve released thousands of music reviews, video premieres, and playlists. We also held a 100-day music marathon called “Agents of Summer.” In total, that’s over 100 hours of great music on our site. We’re still not quite sure how we pulled it off. Someday, we’ll host a huge party for everyone, including you, to listen to the best tracks together!
18. Sometimes we mess up
We once wrote an obituary for a fictional character — Tony Stark from the Avengers. The piece was so moving that we decided to send a push notification to our readers. It read, “In Memory of Tony Stark.” Turns out, that was a spoiler. If you found out how Avengers: Endgame ended from a Meduza push notification, we’re really sorry! We won’t do it again. Probably.
19. Some things are just too good to cut
Fans of film critic Anton Dolin know he has a lot to say, and he says it well. When Dolin gave us the manuscript of his book Bad Russians, it was over 500 pages long. We asked Vladislav Gorin, the host of our daily “What happened” podcast, to edit it. “Vlad, this book is too long, please make some cuts,” we said. “Okay,” Vlad replied — and handed back a text that was over 600 pages long. Iconic.
20. We’ve spent over 30,000 years with you — and we’re just getting started!
Every year, our readers collectively spend more than 3,000 years on Meduza, and we’re grateful for every minute!
Please help keep independent journalism alive by supporting Meduza. Millions of readers rely on us, both in Russia and beyond.