Putin’s war revives Russia’s dark tradition of informers

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, Anna Korobkova says she has spent her days informing on her fellow citizens.

“In some weeks, I write dozens of ‘donosy,’ in some only a few,” she wrote in an email exchange, using the Russian word for denunciations, a term still fraught with years of history of informers going back even before the rule of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. In just over a year, she’s written 1,013 of them.

Korobkova is perhaps the most prolific of a growing number of Russians who are joining in the Kremlin’s crackdown on critics of the war. The informers are a reflection of the sweeping changes the invasion has brought to Russia, seeking to eradicate once-tolerated hints of opposition from neighborhoods, schools, universities and workplaces around the country.