A Russian dissident journalist who is recovering from a suspected poisoning attack explains why Russia must lose in Ukraine

• Elena Kostyuchenko is a Russian dissident journalist and gay rights advocate.
• Her new book, "I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country" is out this week.

Elena Kostyuchenko has long been a thorn in Russia's side.

The Russian dissident journalist and gay rights advocate has been telling her country's untold stories since she was a teenager. Kostyuchenko made a name for herself as the youngest ever staff member at Novaya Gazeta, the famed Russian independent newspaper known for its defiant investigative journalism amid an increasingly hostile Russian media landscape.

More than a year after Novaya was shuttered following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Kostyuchenko is still seeking answers as to how her country descended into full-out war.

"I wanted to show how we ended up here. I wanted to understand from what soil the fascists grew," Kostyuchenko told Insider during a 40-minute Zoom conversation last month as she smoked a cigarette.

"I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country," is Kostyuchenko's new book out this week and her attempt to reckon with a country she still loves despite all she's seen.

The book is a compilation of Kostyuchenko's reporting at Novaya over the years, during which she chronicled the lives of Russian girls recruited into sex work; profiled the families left behind in Beslan after a 2004 terrorist attack at a Russian school left more than 330 people dead, including 186 children; and exposed the horrors of war at a Ukrainian maternity ward soon after the war broke out.

Earlier this year, Kostyuchenko wrote for the first time publicly about surviving two attacks on her life that were ostensibly prompted by her reporting on the Russian government. Rumors of the first attempt forced her to flee Ukraine soon after she arrived in the besieged country in spring 2022 to report on the war. The second attempt came later that same year in the form of a suspected poisoning in Munich.

Woven into the book alongside her unrelenting reporting are a series of personal narratives from Kostyuchenko as she reflects on her own place in a country that appears to have little love left for her.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In August, you wrote for the first time about your belief that you were poisoned in Germany last Autumn. How are you doing health-wise these days?

I feel much better, thank you. Almost all my symptoms are gone. The rest I have is just fatigue. I get tired very easily and it's actually irritating because I used to work a lot.

I used to define myself through my work and it's really hard to understand that I have limits now and to recognize these limits. So I need some more time to deal with myself, I guess.

Your book, "I Love Russia," will be published in October. Are there any concerns that the book's publication could heighten your already high-level safety concerns?

The German police who are running the investigation said an international book release could be a trigger for the people who tried to do this to me. So yeah, I have some concerns.

But it's quite an usual situation for me. When you work as an investigative reporter in Russia, you always want to publish something that your government doesn't want to be published. It's all just mind games because you never can evaluate the real danger.

During my time at Novaya, I got used to being concentrated on things you can change and not to go deep into the things you cannot change. I mean there are some basic and not so basic security protocols I've been following, but it's all that I can actually do.

I wrote a text and I want people to read it.

Can you say where you are currently? Are you in hiding?

I'm moving a lot. That's all that I can say.

I'm curious about the timing of how your book came together. When did you first start writing?

I first got the idea that I should write this book, I believe it was four years ago. It was just the first feeling that I needed to write, but as a full-time reporter, you always have things to do.

But at the end of February, Russia invaded Ukraine. So, I went back to Ukraine to work and I was working there for five weeks before I left Ukraine.

I was in very bad shape. I had lice and PTSD. I don't really remember the first four weeks after I left Ukraine. My girlfriend was with me so she was taking care of me.

Then I opened the internet and I started to look at what people were writing about Russia, what Western politicians were saying about Russia. I found out that their understanding of Russia is very poor, that people don't know what we are dealing with.

I thought I cannot delay this anymore. I need to write.

My girlfriend became my first reader. She also took care of all other things for me like food, documents, cleaning the apartment, looking out for me, checking if I am eating, am I drinking and am I sleeping? And I was just writing, writing, writing.

Did you see any parallels to the current conflict in Ukraine as you were writing and revisiting your past reporting on Russia? I'm thinking specifically about the chapter that includes your reporting from the Donbas in 2014 or the chapter about the northern Nganasan people who were "tamed" by Russia through the eradication of their language and culture.

I hoped that the story of the Nganasan and their disappearing nation would help Russians think about how many nations have already disappeared, how many cultures, and languages, and families, and traditions, and peoples as we are fighting with the Ukrainians to "protect the Russian language."

Unfortunately, new Russian fascism has grown into this nostalgia of the nice, old, Soviet days. For me, the key to understanding it was my mother who is a total Soviet woman with a lot of grief and sorrow about the Soviet Union, who still can't get over the idea that Kyiv is not our city anymore.

Putin and his propaganda, they're using this nostalgia in the worst possible way.

My mother's generation think of themselves as victims because they lived in a country which they loved and this country was taken from them. They're not the ones who voted for the Soviet Union to be taken apart. It was politicians who made the decision and, in many ways, they still feel that they are victims and they feel grief about their past. So this longingness somehow became the reason for justifying killings happening in Ukraine. It's all quite crazy.

You said you wrote this book primarily for Russians. As you look to the future, what do you see and hope for Russia and your people?

I wrote the book for Russians, but not just for Russians, because I honestly believe that no country is immune from fascism.

I was so sure that we are immune because for Christ's sake, we fought the fascists! My grandfather did. We have this in textbooks in schools; we have whole movies telling us how fascism works, why it's so dangerous, and how it goes from a nice narrative to mass murders. I was totally sure we were immune.

But right now, with what's happening in the world, with this turn toward global authoritarianism and the tendencies you also have in your country, it's not safe.

If I could send a letter in the past to myself, I would say: "Be alarmed. Be alarmed. Don't be afraid to be hysterical. Be hysterical if you see your country is going into the darkness."

I really believe that this book would be useful, not just for people who want to understand what modern Russia is and how it became what it is, but also to understand how it's easy to lose your country.

My girlfriend and I were just talking about the subtitle for the Russian version of the book and the subtitle my girlfriend gave is "How to Fuck Up Your Country."

Certainly there are parallels within your reporting to things we've seen happening here in the US in recent years.

Totally. I honestly believe that you will take something from this book too.

You can have so much hope but this hope leaves you blind. The hope I have interferes in all my heart. I cannot really say that I see the future of Russia. I can say that I hope it will be possible.

The only scenario for this to be possible, I believe, is if Russia loses in Ukraine. Because if Russia, God forbid, wins in Ukraine — without even accounting for how many people would be killed — it would mean that fascism grew stronger and that a next war will follow.

Fascism is an expansive ideology. You build fascism not just inside your country. No, it's expansive. And it means that a next war will follow and a next war will follow and it will be a nightmare.