Lilia Yapparova

Lilia Yapparova, the Center’s 2026 Elizabeth Neuffer fellow, is a correspondent at Meduza, an independent Russian- and English-language outlet. Amid a media crackdown in Russia, she had to leave Moscow for Riga, Latvia. Even in exile, she manages to cover pressing stories such as the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Russia; Wagner group’s transgressions across Ukraine and Africa; clandestine prison system Moscow’s arranged for Ukrainian POWs; and Kremlin-created indoctrination system for abducted Ukrainian children. 

At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she was one of the few journalists who reported from inside occupied Chernihiv, and the only Russian journalist reporting from Kramatorsk. She led Meduza’s investigations into civilian killings in Bucha and Bohdanivka. Her international reporting tackles Russian influence campaigns in the Balkans and the Middle East. Prior to that, she worked with TVRain television channel as a correspondent. While undercover, she filmed a report from the occupied Donbas. Her documentaries covered anti-gay purges in Chechnya and assassination of Russian journalists in CAR. 

She is a six-time Redkollegia Award winner, a laureate of Journalism as a Profession Award in 2022 and 2023, and The True Story Award 2023 nominee. In 2022 and 2024, her investigations into Russian war crimes became finalists for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize.