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 (1995–96),
Izvestia (1996–97),
Expert (1997–98),
Sovershenno Secretno (1999–2000), 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 (2005–15) and
Gazeta.ru (2006–2013). She also worked for television channels
NTV (2000–01),
ORT (2001–02),
TVS (2002–03) and
REN TV (2003–04). 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. presents Latynina with the Freedom Defenders Award in 2008 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 [political] 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 (United Kingdom), 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 September of the same year, she was included in the Russian list of
foreign agents. ==Writing career==