‘She always cared about other people’s problems’ Remembering Russian investigative journalist Irina Pankratova
Russian journalist Irina Pankratova passed away after a prolonged illness on May 10. She was 39 years old.
Since 2019, Pankratova had worked for the independent news site The Bell, where she was, as the outlet itself puts it, “the sole and irreplaceable investigative reporter.”
According to The Bell’s obituary written by her colleagues, Pankratova began doing investigative journalism in the mid-2010s in St. Petersburg, where she focused on topics that “weren’t glamorous but were relevant to ordinary people,” such as public utilities, street vendors, and cigarette smuggling. According to The Bell, this was her way of “making the world a little fairer.”
Her main stories, the obituary notes, were about people who had built businesses on their ties to power, which in recent years often meant profiting from the war against Ukraine.
Her big investigations became foundational texts for her colleagues. When [Chechnya Governor] Ramzan Kadyrov and [Dagestani Senator] Suleiman Kerimov went to war over [e-retailer] Wildberries, everyone cited her piece about how Tatyana and Vladislav Bakalchuk built their business. When [Russian consumer welfare agency] Rospotrebnadzor began mass shutdowns of the Svetofor discount chain, people turned to her investigation into how the Schneider brothers built that empire.
Emigration was especially hard for Pankratova, according to The Bell. Before she was forced to leave Russia altogether, she moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow, “after truly independent media disappeared from St. Petersburg.” Just as Moscow was becoming her home, her colleagues write, Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine began, and she had to leave the country entirely.
But all the while, Pankratova continued to report. “She said that work gave her strength, brought her back together, and pulled her through,” the obituary says.
She always cared about other people’s problems. And she really wanted people to be together, not apart. In St. Petersburg, she founded a local journalists’ club that’s still going strong today. She brought everyone together — and did it with fun, warmth, and ease. There’s no doubt that other local journalists, just like Ira herself, still count those nights dancing and drinking on the Gulf [of Finland] as among the happiest of their lives — arguing about journalism, showing off their latest pieces, falling in love, being young and full of hope.
In her final months, The Bell writes, Pankratova began dictating a book about herself and her experiences as a journalist. Her colleagues vowed in the obituary to make sure the memoir gets published.