Yulia Latynina


Yulia Leonidovna Latynina 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.
WWW latynina.tv𝕏 YLatyninaFB yulia.latynina.7YT UCzaqqlriSjVyc795m86GVygTikTok yulialatyninaIG latynina.tv

Biography

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, Izvestia, Expert, Sovershenno Secretno, 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 and Gazeta.ru. She also worked for television channels NTV, ORT, TVS and REN TV. 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:

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 orientation have been creating socialism only for the poor".
Despite being thought of by many Russians and Europeans as being in opposition to Putin's rule and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she has numerous times voiced statements that align with Putin's views in regards to Ukraine. For example, on 1 August 2015, on Echo of Moscow she characterized Ukrainian and Ukrainian language in the following way "The problem, the situation that exists now in the history of Ukraine and Russia has its foundation in Bolsheviks who searching for support gave a part of Russian Empire to Ukraine, artificially supporting Ukrainian language... Had it not been for Bolsheviks, by the end of 20th century Ukraine would have had more or less the same situation as Scotland. Even if Scotland separates from England, but it would still speak English. Even Ireland speaks English. At the beginning of 20th century Ukrainian language in Ukraine would have been more or less like Breton language in modern France. A language of a part of undereducated population. So when in 1991 USSR broke apart, there appeared an artificial state not in a bad sense of word, but in a sense that if this country was cut in different way during the Bolshevik rule, we understand that it would have dissolved in a different way too. So the problem of the Ukrainization of this state began with, forgive me my Ukrainian friends, an inferior and not as culturally developed language as Russian, was supposed to get its place under the sun, especially at the expense of the people who always spoke Russian and thought that it is their native language and the language they can officially use. Same phrases have been used by Putin numerous times since 2008 that portray Ukraine as an "artificial statelike creation" and that "Russia gifted Ukraine Crimea and Eastern Ukraine".
Despite being libertarian in views, she has consistently voiced opinions that contradict that. In her article dated 25 March 2025, she tries to criticise the statement that Russians as nation have to through the same process that Germans went through after World War II by misrepresenting statistics of Holocaust and falsely comparing them to the victims of the war in Ukraine. While doing so she also takes most of the blame for the start of World War II from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, claiming that the countries of Eastern Europe that appeared after the breakup of Austria-Hungary after the World War I: "After the First World War Germany was labeled to be the guilty one, Austria was separated. New countries of Eastern Europe with the approval of the winners built their local Nazism". She also goes on to say that "Nazism in Europe started not in Germany. It began in these small countries. German Nazism was a response to that". In one more claim she hints that Czechoslovakia was conducting a genocide of Sudeten Germans by comparing their treatment to Rwandan genocide: "Tomáš Masaryk promised to Woodrow Wilson that he'd build a new Switzerland, but instead he built Rwanda. No wonder Sudeten Germans have all supported Hitler."

Attacks

In retaliation for her political stance and categorical statements, Latynina became a victim of several attacks. On 20 August 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

Latynina 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 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 to 2000 has exceeded 500,000 copies.
YearTitle in RussianTranslationGenreCycle
1991«Дело о пропавшем боге»A Case of the Missing GodFantasyWei Empire
1994«Клеарх и Гераклея»Clearchus and HeracleaFantasy
1995«Бомба для банкира»The Bomb for the BankerCrime fictionBandit
1996«Колдуны и министры»Wizards and MinistersFantasyWei Empire
1996«Сто полей»The 100 SquaresFantasyWei Empire
1996«Повесть о Золотом Государе»Tale of the Golden EmperorFantasyWei Empire
1997«Здравствуйте, я ваша крыша»Hello, I'm Your RoofFantasy
1999«Бандит»BanditCrime fictionBandit
1999«Охота на изюбря»Hunting ElkCrime fictionIndustrial Area
1999«Инсайдер»The InsiderFantasyWei Empire
1999«Повесть о государыне Кассии»Tale of the Empress CassiaFantasyWei Empire
1999«Дело о лазоревом письме»Case of the Azure LetterFantasyWei Empire
2000«Разбор полётов»DebriefingCrime fictionBandit
2000«Саранча»LocustCrime fictionBandit
2000«Стальной король»Steel KingCrime fictionIndustrial Area
2001«Ничья»The DrawCrime fiction
2003«Промзона»Industrial AreaCrime fictionIndustrial Area
2004«Только голуби летают бесплатно»Only Pigeons Fly for FreeCrime fiction
2005«Джаханнам, или До встречи в Аду»Jahannam, or See You in HellThrillerCaucasus
2005«Ниязбек»NiyazbekThrillerCaucasus
2007«Земля войны»The Land of WarThrillerCaucasus
2007«Нелюдь»InhumanFantasy
2009«Не время для славы»No Time for GloryThrillerCaucasus
2012«Русский булочник»Russian BakerNon-fiction
2018«Иисус. Историческое расследование»Jesus. Historical InvestigationNon-fictionHistorical Investigation
2019«Христос с тысячью лиц»Christ with a Thousand FacesNon-fictionHistorical Investigation
2025«Сотворение Бога»Creation of GodNon-fictionHistorical Investigation