Yulia Latynina

Yulia Leonidovna Latynina (Ю́лия Леони́довна Латы́нина; born 16 June 1966) is an independent journalist, writer, TV and radio host from Russia. She grew famous as a columnist for Novaya Gazeta and was the most popular host at the Echo of Moscow radio station for years.

Yulia Latynina is a prolific writer, she has written more than twenty books, including fantasy and crime fiction.

Family and education
Yulia Latynina was born in Moscow on 16 June 1966. Her father is writer Leonid Latynin and her mother is literary critic Alla Latynina.

Yulia Latynina studied philology at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute from 1983 to 1988. In 1993, under the supervision of Professor Vyacheslav Ivanov she defended her PhD at the Gorky Institute of World Literature.

Journalistic career
Latynina started her journalistic career as an economic columnist. She worked for periodicals Segodnya (1995–96), Izvestia (1996–97), Expert (1997–98), Sovershenno Secretno (1999–2000), and others. By 2000, Latynina already had a reputation as one of the leading journalists in the field of economics. In 2001 she became a columnist for Novaya Gazeta. In the same year, she was invited to host ‘Rublevaya Zona’, an analytical programme on NTV. The show started her Tv career. In 2003, it was followed by an analytical programm “24” that was broadcast on REN TV.

Later, Latynina worked for Ezhednevny Zhurnal (2005–15) and Gazeta.ru (2006–2013). She also worked for television channels NTV (2000–01), ORT (2001–02), TVS (2002–03) and REN TV (2003–04). In 2003 Latynina started hosting the show Access Code at a radio station Echo of Moscow.

In 2007, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera named her best foreign journalist in an award ceremony dedicated to Maria Grazia Cutuli. In 2008, Latynina received the Freedom Defenders Award from the United States Department of State. She received the award from Condoleezza Rice, who praised the journalist for her achievements: "Yulia has exposed corruption and abuses of authority among government officials as well as egregious human rights violations by both government authorities and private actors, particularly in the North Caucasus."

Views
Yulia Latynina is known for her sharp and polemic statements. She proclaims herself a libertarian; however in its classic meaning of maximal personal freedom, standing in strong opposition to left politics and the woke culture.

She denies global warming and called Michael E. Mann's controversial hockey stick graph a fake, or rather based on bad math; there is no strong model ubiquitously predicting such singular temperature growth. As of the year 2020 she prefers to cite Bjørn Lomborg's position, which acknowledges current temperature raise, which may change to global cooling after not yet determined period as happened before. There is no proven bad impact from the temperature growth, because earlier it was associated only with rise of civilizations. There is no human, or carbon dioxide role in this because there are much stronger forces, like solar cycles and oceanic currents involved. So she concludes that the carbon dioxide control policies are baseless, and unrealistic.

Latynina was a member of the Committee 2008.

She voiced an opinion that universal suffrage was bad for poor countries. She also criticized western left-liberalism and human rights organizations which she thinks are used by Muslim extremists as useful idiots, as coined by Stalin, to prevent winning the War on Terror.

In her opinion, Moscow Helsinki Group was wrong in supporting Russian scientist Igor Sutyagin, who she suggested could actually be involved in espionage. She argued that although communications of Sutyagin with foreign spy agencies have never been proven, the foreign agency that he passed information on was indeed highly suspicious.

Latynina has been a consistent critic of leftist politics. In September 2020, she said: "I. e, the owners of Sargon-like countries are witnessing the same propaganda, a similar technology of total lies combined with socialism and leftist ideas. It penetrates all the structures of Western society... Here, the USSR used to be creating socialism for everyone, and, in the United States, the politicians were a lot smarter. Even those with the left [political] orientation have been creating socialism only for the poor".

Attacks
In retaliation for her political stance and categorical statements, Latynina became a victim of several attacks. On August 20, 2016, she was assaulted by two men in motorcycle helmets who poured feces on her. On the night of 18 and 19 July 2017, unknown assailants attacked Latynina's house and sprayed it with a very pungent and caustic type of gas of unknown composition. Along with herself, 8 people were additionally injured in the gas attack, including four elderly people and two children. She said that she would not bring the case to the officials as police had not investigated some attacks on opposition politicians, however, Dmitry Muratov reported the attack to the police.

On 2 September, Latynina's car was set on fire. The investigator said that "the car caught fire by itself". On 9 September, Latynina announced that she and her family are leaving Russia and would not return "in the near future". She called the car's arson an attempted murder. According to her father, Latynina had been under surveillance for some time, and the attackers were not bandits but an organized group that received commands from certain influential people.

In emigration
In 2022, Latynina joined the Anti-war committee. She has been a member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia since February 2022. In September of the same year, she was included in the Russian list of foreign agents.

Writing career


Latynina published her first novel in 1990. For some time she used a pen-name Eugene Klimovich, however, most subsequent printings were issued under the author's real name. She works in the genre of sharp detective-adventure prose on Russian material as well as in fiction. In 1995 Latynina won the Russian Booker Prize for her novel Clearchus and Heraclea and the Strannik (Russian Literary Award) for The Preacher. Later she was nominated to the National Bestseller literary prize, as well as the Russian Booker and several others. The total print run of Yulia Latynina's books from 1999-2000 has exceeded 500,000 copies.