Polonca Frelih

Polona Frelih
Born	Polonca Frelih (1974-05-13) May 13, 1974 (age 47) Šempeter pri Gorici, Yugoslavia
Citizenship	Slovenia
Alma mater	University of Ljubljana
Occupation	Journalist
Employer	Radiotelevizija Slovenija Delo (newspaper) (until May 2016)

Polonca Frelih (born 13 May 1974, Sempeter pri Gorici), known under pen name Polona Frelih, is an investigative journalist and a political correspondent from Slovenia noted for her war zone reporting and controversy over Edward Snowden’s flee to Russia.

Biography[]

Frelih was brought up by her single mother in a remote village in Slovenian Alps. When she was 15, Polonca moved to Ljubljana where she studied at Poljanska Gymnasium with the dream of pursuing a career in journalism. In 1992 she entered University of Ljubljana and a few years later spent one year in Chicago as an exchange student studying TV journalism at Roosevelt University. Her studies were sponsored by Open Society Institute. Upon her return to Slovenia, Polonca together with her collague Manja Klemenčič established Slovenian debate program ZiP. Frelih worked at the news desk and later foreign news department of Slovenia's public television. In 2005 she won an internship for CNN, Atlanta. Upon Frelih's return to Slovenia, she was Slovenian correspondent for the CNN World Report. At that time she self-studied Russian in order to move to Moscow as a news correspondent, the post that she eventually received from Delo, Slovenia's oldest daily newspaper.

Work in Moscow[]

While based in Russia's capital, Frelih traveled extensively around the former Soviet Union and wrote on various topics from Russia's politics to Caucasus, Central Asia, Belarus and Ukraine, gradually becoming a well known member of the Moscow journalist community. She interviewed prominent members of the Russian opposition, including Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Eduard Limonov to name just a few of them. She also covered controversial topics, such as Seliger (forum), far right boot camps and activism, gay rights in Russia, and opposition protests. In 2007 she was accredited by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an official foreign correspondent working in Moscow.

Frelih was the first journalist from the European Union to report from the ground during the Russo-Georgian War in August 2008 and stated that the war started with the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali on August 7, 2008. The fact which was later confirmed by independent international commission under the supervision of Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini.^[1] In her article for Delo, she wrote that she came to Georgia shortly before the conflict working on another report and so was there by chance. Frelih came under fire as she was in close proximity to the battlefield,^[2] however, she decided to stay in the conflict zone and refused evacuation arranged by Slovenia's foreign ministry.^[3]

In July 2013 Polona Frelih was the only journalist who attended the closed door meeting between Edward Snowden and representatives of international humanitarian organizations and lawyers, which took place in the securely guarded transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport.^[4][5] Frelih later admitted in an interview that at that time she was in her last pregnancy.

Snowden photograph controversy[]

A controversy arose due to the fact that Frelih came to the Snowden meeting uninvited and took a photograph of Snowden despite being told not to do so. Following a scandal in Slovenia, Frelih wrote that she worked in the public interest, because “no other journalist could at the time witness that Snowden was, indeed, in Sheremetyevo airport’s transit zone”, to say nothing of Snowden's requests for asylum that were not yet made public.^[6][7] Consequently, Frelih moved from Russia back to Slovenia and resigned from her post as Delo's correspondent citing her disagreement with editorial policy.

Accusations of pro-Russian bias[]

In 2014 Frelih wrote a series of news articles covering War in Donbass, and in 2015, together with several European journalists she traveled to Donetsk, where she interviewed not only local civilians,^[8] but also a number of fighters, as well as , at that time the minister of foreign affairs of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.^[9]

Back in Slovenia, Frelih was immediately accused of pro-Russian bias in her reporting, the allegation she dismissed by arguing that pro-Ukrainian view of the conflict was “over-represented in Western media”. Shortly after, Frelih's name and personal details appeared on Myrotvorets website where she was called an "enemy of Ukraine"; later names of dozens and hundreds of foreign journalists appeared there in similar context. That led to an international outcry, and concerns over journalist's safety were voiced by Slovenia's president Borut Pahor during his talks with the president of Ukraine.^[10]

In 2016 Frelih briefly headed Slovene edition of Russia's foreign-language news agency Russia Beyond, an outlet which she brought to Slovenia as the "first informative and analytical portal about Russian in the Slovene language".^[11] Dismissing accusations of pro-Russian bias, Frelih stated that she simply wanted Russian views to be heard and considered in the West.

In 2015 Frelih published a lengthy interview with Russia's prime minister Dmitri Medvedev which she took during Medvedev's visit to Slovenia.^[12] Frelih also interviewed several high-ranking officials from the Commonwealth of Independent States, including foreign ministers of Belarus and Armenia.

Having abandoned political journalism altogether, Frelih currently works as an independent consultant. She occasionally publishes her travel reports at GEA magazine in Slovenia.

References[]