In profile

From 1999 to 2015, I headed the Moscow office of the news magazine „Focus“. At the end of 2011, I had to leave Russia after massive threats and continued to run the office from Berlin for almost four years. I was born in Augsburg and am the author of several bestsellers and translator of Mikhail Gorbachev. I wrote for numerous media, such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, the Wiener Zeitung and the Münchner Merkur. I was the host of a weekly political talk show on the Russian-language German channel OstWest-TV until July 2021; until the Corona crisis, I was also a lecturer at the Institute of International Politics and Economics as Haus Rissen active in Hamburg and there in constant exchange with the Bundeswehr.

In 2008, I was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal. The official justification for this: „In view of his extraordinary commitment, with which he has critically dealt with the Russian political system for many years and has fought on the ground with a high level of personal commitment for freedom of opinion and freedom of assembly and thus for the protection of civil and human rights.“

Cicero once called me „one of Germany’s leading experts on Russia“. And the „Welt“ wrote: „No one has ever described the Russian power system better than him. Boris Reitschuster, one of the sharpest Putin critics in Germany, can be proud of himself. The Russian president himself has used the term ‚democratization‘, which Reitschuster helped to coin, at least once .“

How it came to my love for Russia, which has become my second home? I succumbed to the fascination of the country and a concrete inhabitant of it after a youth exchange with the Soviet Union in 1988. This was the best motivation to learn on my own the language of the country with which nothing connected me before except my first name. After graduating from high school in 1990, I moved to Moscow as a student to my childhood sweetheart, with two suitcases and all my savings. In a host family and in empty stores I got to know Russia away from the foreigner ghettos. After training as an interpreter, I worked as a German teacher and translator. At the same time, I reported from Russia for various German daily newspapers. After five years in Moscow, I did a traineeship at the „Augsburger Allgemeine“ in 1995 and then worked for the press agencies dpa and AFP in Munich. As head of the FOCUS Moscow office, I returned to the country where I feel at home in 1999 and lived there until the end of 2011.

Focus boss Markwort and Reitschuster with Putin in Sochi 2001

Boris Reitschuster on the Internet:
www.reitschuster.de
gettr.com/user/reitschuster
www.twitter.com/reitschuster
https://t.me/reitschusterde
Unfortunately, I am currently blocked again illegally and arbitrarily on Facebook. I will therefore only use Facebook sporadically in the future.