Russia - ACTING UP - Natalya Voronitsyna
518 views · Published 29 December 2011 · 1:56 · Indexed 8 November 2026
Channel: Human Rights Watch · 2011 · Nonprofits & Activism
ACTING UP - RUSSIA'S CIVIL SOCIETY - Portraits by Platon for Human Rights Watch - Voronitsyna is a former glossy magazine photographer, now confined to her bed in a suburb of Moscow with rapid-onset multiple sclerosis. When fires engulfed western Russia in 2010, killing dozens of people, burning down thousands of homes, and destroying millions of hectares of forest, Voronitsyna watched the official broadcast media claim that everything was under control. A blogger on the popular site, Livejournal.ru, she quickly began organizing information about which regions needed what kind of help, and when. Acting as a kind of traffic cop, she dispatched volunteers with supplies to areas where local firefighters were overwhelmed, lacking basic equipment such as pumps and hoses due to years of official neglect. "[During the fires] it became obvious to a large part of Russia's citizens that they couldn't count on the government," she says.
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