The Spanish-language correspondent for RFI and France 24 in Moscow, Xavier Colás, has been expelled by the Russian regime, which refused to renew his visa. The journalist received a notice to leave Russia within 24 hours and was forced to leave the country where he had lived for 12 years.
(RFI) Spanish journalist Xavier Colás, who has worked as a correspondent for RFI and France 24, among other media outlets, was notified on Tuesday evening (19) that he had just 24 hours to leave the country, without receiving any explanation for the refusal to renew his visa. Xavier Colas is already out of Russia.
“It’s hard to suddenly pack 12 years of your life into three suitcases overnight and close the door knowing that that apartment will also be forbidden territory for you the next day. But we correspondents work where we’re allowed, without letting anyone tell us what we should or shouldn’t say,” Colás told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, for which he also works.
Colás was recently visited by Russian police officers who warned him to stop covering demonstrations by the wives of Russian servicemen who are unhappy about the war in Ukraine.
“Some of these women don’t even object, at least not in public. But the regime knows that going after them with their husbands fighting would be very controversial, so they go after us,” the journalist explained.
On February 28, Colás presented his book ‘Putinistan: an incredible country in the hands of a delusional president’ in Spain, in which, according to him, he “explains the misunderstanding about freedom in Russia’s early years, Putin’s difficult return to the Kremlin, the ultraconservative turn, the initial reasons for his search for internal (gays) and external (Ukraine) enemies”, among other central themes of Russian politics in recent years.
“Putinistan”
Xavier Colás has recently given several interviews to the Spanish press, in which he has commented on Russian news and promoted his book. “Putin appears on the political scene as an opportunity for stability for Russians, which he actually achieved for a few years. Now, even the Russians have understood that there is no stability with him and that nobody knows what will happen when he leaves, that it is impossible for anything to change while he is in power, and that it is impossible to know what will happen when he is not there,” said the journalist in an interview with the Telecinco channel.
With Colás’ expulsion, RFI and several other media outlets with which he collaborated have lost the work of a professional of journalistic rigor, who provided information on the political, economic and social context in Russia, a delicate job especially after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Since the start of the war, organizations such as Amnesty International have denounced the increased pressure on journalists in Russia, such as the arrest of a dozen correspondents covering a demonstration against the conflict in Ukraine in early February.