Russian journalist Irina Slavina. Photo from Irina Slavina's Facebook account. On October 2, Irina Slavina, editor of KozaPress, died in Nizhny Novgorod, after setting herself on fire outside an interior minister building in the city. In her last Facebook post, Slavina wrote: “I ask you to blame the Russian Federation for my death.” Slavina’s death has shocked many, with several groups calling for a criminal investigation into the actions of Russian law enforcement that may have contributed to her death. On 1 October, Slavina’s home was searched as part of an investigation into the Open Russia movement – local law enforcement broke down the door to her apartment and confiscated all her computer equipment. She is survived by her husband and daughter. Slavina’s website KozaPress covered a range of local issues — from public utilities and pensions to property development and the security services — and by 2019 was the second most-cited media in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 2017 and 2018, Slavina wrote three articles for openDemocracy — about how people who migrate to Russia are targeted by the security services. This work included exposing a horrendous fabrication of an “Islamic State” plot in her home region. The Russian online publication Holod.Media asked people who knew her for their reactions, which was translated to English by oDR, openDemocracy's section on Russia and the post-Soviet space. RuNet Echo republishes this text with the permission of both publications. Irina was the founder, publisher and chief editor of the most popular independent media in Nizhny Novgorod — KozaPress. In recent years, she dedicated her entire life to working on this media. It’s clear that she was completely independent, because the security services pressured her constantly. They created several administrative cases against her — about insulting [a representative] of the authorities, the “undesirable organisation” law, for organising a march in memory of [Boris] Nemtsov, some other cases. She lived under constant pressure these past few years, in constant fear, anxiety. It seems she couldn’t take it anymore, the search of her apartment was the last straw. Before she entered journalism, Irina worked as a school teacher. She worked for different regional media in Nizhny Novgorod, then she decided to set up her own – she lacked space for self-realisation, she didn’t want to be limited by some kind of administrative barriers, she didn’t want to serve, she wanted to tell the truth. She built the outlet from the ground up. She collected money including via donations. I donated too, like other people here. When we first met, KozaPress had not been set up yet, but Irina was already a journalist. She loved Russia very much, her city, she wasn’t planning on emigrating, she wanted our society to become more civilised and for it to become a nicer place to live. She was always joking, and seemed happy. Now it’s clear that there was a lot of anxiety behind this, but she never talked about this publicly. As a journalist, she was marked out by the fact that she always tried to get to the truth, whatever it cost her. There’s no other journalist like her in Nizhny Novgorod. Public officials knew her well and were afraid of her. The last time I saw her was last week when deputies to the city council were receiving their mandates. There was nothing depressive, no strange remarks from her — we had a normal chat, then she asked me for some photographs to publish with an article. She never published any article that investigators could have had a go at. You have to understand that the case wasn’t started against her, but someone else who had a lot of administrative cases outstanding, enough to start a criminal case. We don’t have Open Russia in Nizhny Novgorod. She couldn’t have worked with them. I think that the pressure of the court, the house search led to her taking her own life, nothing else. As someone whose home was also searched yesterday, I can say that it’s a lot of pressure. Especially when it happens over a couple of years. This can totally lead someone to take their own life. It’s hard to live like that, it’s true. It’s very hard to speak. Ira Slavina is one of the best journalists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. A person of extreme professionalism and at the same time very strong civic position. To many people, she gave the impression that she was like a stone wall, but actually she was a very sensitive person. People will say a lot of things now, that it was an act of weakness… What she did is awful, but it wasn’t weak. It seems it was a cry of desperation, to protest against the horror that is happening.