Top Russian journalist denies reports he’s fleeing Russia

  • 2014-07-04
  • From wire reports, TALLINN

Artem Troitsky speaks at Tallinn Music Week earlier this year

Popular Russian journalist Artemi Troitsky has denied reports he's abandoned his homeland to settle in Estonia, Russian media reports.

An outspoken critic against Russian president Vladimir Putin, Troitsky told the Eesti Päevaleht newspaper on Friday that he had left  Russia and applied for permanent Estonian citizenship, blaming "the atmosphere of hysteria, militarism, aggression."

Troitsky later denied reports he would be revoking his Russian citizenship. He had been offered to lecture at Tallinn and Helsinki universities, however.

"I hasten to reassure someone or may disappoint, but it just means that I will often leave Moscow, where I am teaching at Moscow State University and I'm not going to give that [position] up," Troitsky told lenta.ru.

"I'm still a Russian citizen, and as far as I know it, our country has no laws that would prohibit teaching at foreign universities."

Troitsky will teach music, culture and journalism at universities and has no political motives, he added.

The journalist, once described by the New York Times as the "the leading Soviet rock critic", lectures in music journalism at Moscow State University.

In 1986 was one of the organizers of the "Account No. 904" rock concert, modeled on the West's Live Aid concert the same year, to raise funds for the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the first such concert in the Soviet Union.