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.