Having spent three decades in Moscow, the correspondent is still reporting under a dangerous regime. But it’s not time to leave just yet

Colin Freeman

Published 20 April 2026 6:00am BST

As the BBC’s man in Moscow, Steve Rosenberg is used to being insulted on Russian state media. “British propagandist”. “That obnoxious reporter”. “Enemy of Russia”. Even he, though, was startled by the broadside last month from Vladimir Solovyov, a pro-Kremlin pundit on the state-owned Russia-1 TV channel, who makes Vladimir Putin look tame. Having lamented that Russia hadn’t yet nuked Britain “from the face of the Earth”, Solovyov turned his attention to the BBC’s Moscow bureau.

“Why hasn’t the BBC been kicked out of Russia yet, along with that Steve Rotten-berg?” he fumed. “He walks around looking like a defecating squirrel… constantly surprised by things. What’s he doing here?”

“Just getting on with my job”, insists Rosenberg, 57, when I speak to him over Zoom from Moscow, where he’s worked as a reporter since the 1990s. “I’ve met [Solovyov] many times – we used to interview him in the early 2000s, when he was working for a Moscow radio station [which] was very pro-Europe and pro-West. It’s funny how people change.”

Squirrelgate, as Rosenberg now refers to it, shows how his own job has transformed, too. Ten years ago, he would sometimes struggle to get BBC editors in London to take much interest in Russia. Then, after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in 2022, it became the biggest geopolitical story in the world. Almost overnight, East-West relations became as hostile as during the Cold War, with Russia lurching back to Soviet-style dictatorship.

Many Western reporters left, fearful of arrest or imprisonment. But Rosenberg opted to stay, doing his best to report robustly while not getting himself jailed or banished. And, four years on, much to the irritation of pundits like Solovyov, he has still not been kicked out. If anything, Squirrelgate has earned him a few more fans.

“The day after, I was out walking in Moscow, and several people came up, shook my hand, and asked for selfies. One guy said, ‘We like your reports!’ I never used to get recognised. There’s the contrast between the anti-Western rhetoric in the state media, and the reaction from ordinary Russians, of which I’d say 95 per cent are really positive.”

In contemporary Russia, however, there is only one person whose opinion matters, and that is Putin, who appears to tolerate Rosenberg’s presence. During presidential press conferences, Putin sometimes even calls Rosenberg by his first name – which, given the Russian leader’s chilly persona, is about as friendly as it gets. Ominously, Rosenberg does not expect to see Putin mellow with old age.

“I find it hard to imagine Vladimir Putin as a peacetime president again,” he says. “The war on Ukraine has come to define his time in office; he seems most animated, most energised when talking about the so-called ‘special military operation’. And, right now, he appears determined to fight on until he achieves what he sees as victory.”

So, will he be in power much longer? Rosenberg stresses that he doesn’t have “a BBC crystal ball”. But, as of yet, he detects no sign of the huge Russian casualty figures (200,000 Russian dead, according to a BBC Russia survey) brewing unrest on the streets. Which, he says, is “quite remarkable, considering the scale of the losses”.

“There are no official figures released here, but it must be an enormous figure. In the local cemeteries, there are sections for Russian soldiers who have been killed in Ukraine, and new memorials to the war dead in towns and villages and cities. But I do detect a ‘Why is this happening?’ attitude.”

Rosenberg describes his job as “walking a tightrope”, doing his best to be honest and accurate while also not getting his visa cancelled. And it seems to be paying off. Last month, he received the Royal Television Society (RTS) Special Award – a lifetime achievement gong that praised his “devotion to his patch”. And the selfie requests may now happen more frequently, thanks to February’s documentary Our Man in Moscow, in which Panorama followed a year in the life of Rosenberg and his producer, Ben Tavener.

The documentary shows the BBC man’s strange daily routine – still officially part of the Russia press pack (the group of foreign journalists working in the country), still invited to presidential press conferences, yet now also treated like an enemy of the people. Once-friendly contacts are suddenly scared to speak to him.

“So many of the pundits and experts that used to speak to us no longer do so. Some because they’ve left the country, or others because they believe it wouldn’t be good to speak to a Western broadcaster.”

On trips out of town, he is tailed by plain-clothes spooks, harassed by police, and even stalked by other Russian TV crews. The Panorama documentary shows him in the city of Tver, outside Moscow, being stopped by police in the street for asking locals what they thought of Donald Trump’s peace talks. While the police question Rosenberg, a local TV crew turns up (apparently tipped off by the authorities), prompting a standoff between the two crews.

“You’re talking to people freely, and no one gets in your way,” the Russian reporter tells Rosenberg. “Nobody apart from you,” he retorts. “And the police officers standing next to our car.”

Despite all this, Rosenberg never seems to be anything other than calm and amiable. He has none of the swagger of a BBC Big Beast like John Simpson, and refrains from sermonising on social media in the style of Gary Lineker.

Nor does the documentary hype him up as some war-zone hero. Yet the sense of jeopardy is clear. Within days of the Ukraine invasion, Putin made it a crime for reporters to spread “false information about the armed forces”, on pain of a 15-year jail sentence. It became illegal to call it a “war”, rather than Putin’s preferred euphemism of “special military operation”.

The Kremlin has also jailed foreign reporters on trumped-up spying charges in order to use them as diplomatic bargaining chips, as happened with the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich, who spent 16 months behind bars after being arrested in early 2023. The same fate could arguably befall Rosenberg anytime. And the more he does his job – to report without fear or favour – the more likely it is.

What was it like when the war first broke out? Did he ever think of just leaving? “I was shocked when the Russian troops poured across the border into Ukraine,” he says, admitting that, like nearly every other Russia expert (including most of Putin’s cabinet), he didn’t think it would happen.

“I thought it was diplomatic sabre-rattling on the border. I didn’t think that Putin would actually go ahead. That first day, I was working right up till the 10 O’Clock News, and it was only after that it really hit me that things were never going to be the same again.”

In the second week of the invasion, when the Kremlin outlawed the word “war”, BBC bosses took Rosenberg off air for several days while they studied what risks the legislation might pose. It was “not clear where the red lines were”, and it was with a certain sense of jeopardy that Rosenberg carried on using the “W” word. Thus far, the Kremlin has not complained.

“Sometimes I use the word ‘war’, or the phrase ‘Russia’s war on Ukraine’,” he says, “because that is what it is. Sometimes I also refer to the ‘so-called special military operation’. But Russians on the street call it a ‘war’, and some Russian officials do too now, although they claim this is a war started by the West.

“We have been feeling our way through, not quite sure where the ‘mines’ are in this minefield. But I want to report accurately and honestly – there’s no point being here otherwise.”

Plenty of Western media outlets have withdrawn employees – including the BBC, which reduced its main bureau to a skeleton staff and relocated its Russian-language service to Latvia. Rosenberg now works in a near-empty bureau with just four other staff. There was another queasy moment after the imprisonment of Gershkovich (who was later freed in August 2024).

“That was a watershed because we realised that having a foreign passport was no real protection. If I’d been an American citizen [like Gershkovich], I might have made a different decision.

“But I was keen to stay, because having spent so long in Russia, my whole life had led up to this moment. So, I was constantly assessing and reassessing the situation to see what was safe to report, what wasn’t.

“While I’ve never had any feedback from the Kremlin, I’d like to think there’s a modicum of respect for the fact that I’ve devoted more than half my life to Russia, and learnt the language. But it could all end tomorrow.”

Certainly, Rosenberg presents impeccable Russophile credentials. The son of a dentist, he was raised in Chingford, east London, but had a Russian-Jewish great-grandfather, who grew up in what is now Belarus.

His own fascination with Russia started aged 12, when he eked out boring Sunday mornings by watching Russian Language and People, a 1980s BBC educational and cultural show. Produced to coincide with that year’s Moscow Olympics, it portrayed a world otherwise only shown through grim TV bulletins about the Cold War.

“I sat there transfixed, thinking, ‘This is really interesting, the language sounds beautiful’. They had little video pieces about the Soviet Union, this mysterious land.”

After getting a First in Russian Studies from Leeds University in 1991, he then moved straight to Moscow, teaching English at the State Technological University. “The Soviet Union was collapsing at the time, but there was belief in people power and [with] the first elections, people felt energised,” he says. “Russia and the West seemed to be becoming bosom buddies.”

As well as near-flawless Russian, Rosenberg also impressed with his skill as a pianist. In 1997, he played live on The White Parrot Club, a revue show on Russia’s independent Ren-TV channel. That year he also joined the BBC as a producer, having previously worked as a translator for CBS.

He became Moscow correspondent in 2003, covering the 2004 Beslan school terror attack and once interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev. Afterwards, the architect of glasnost sang along as Rosenberg played the folk classic Moscow Nights on Gorbachev’s grand piano. Soviet leaders – even reformists like Gorbachev – didn’t often open up like that.

In a land where classical music is still widely appreciated, Rosenberg’s piano playing doubtless acts as an instrument of “soft power”. He even performs numbers on his own YouTube channel, including The Archers theme tune in the style of Rachmaninoff. Colleagues in the Moscow press pack, though, also say he is disarmingly good at the job. “He speaks Russian like a native and knows the country really well, including how to talk to officials, who can otherwise make life really hard,” said one.

A fellow BBC correspondent adds: “He’s very hard-working – up for the Today programme at 6am, and still available for News at Ten (1am Moscow time). Plus he’s got no airs and graces.”

Lengthy though it is, Rosenberg’s working day is far harder to fill these days. The filming locations that are normally a TV crew’s bread and butter – hospitals, schools, factories, companies, prisons – are now largely off-limits, as most are now wary of foreign cameras. His day starts at 5am by walking his dog – one-third of what he calls the “Holy Trinity” that keeps him sane, along with his piano and his Russian wife, Olga, a charity worker. He also has two adult children in England, where he goes for “decompression” breaks every few months, despite it now being a 16-hour journey via Istanbul because of sanctions on Russian airlines.

Does he ever worry about spies planting listening bugs in the house while he’s out? “It’s never been swept. And to be honest, I don’t see the point. Because if you think all the time that you’re being listened to, you’d go crazy.”

There are various theories as to just why Russia continues to host Rosenberg. Modestly, he doesn’t claim it’s all about him. He points out that, since Moscow sees itself as a “great power”, the Kremlin likes to have foreign correspondents in its court, rather like ambassadors. Rosenberg also broadcasts in English, which most Russians don’t speak.

But in Russia’s paranoid, macho culture, it may also help that Rosenberg is only 5ft 6in and has a genial manner. At the risk of dignifying Squirrelgate, he comes across as a small, harmless-looking creature – qualities he sometimes exploits.

“I remember being in a courtroom where a big security guard was trying to block the corridor to the assembled press pack,” his colleague recalls. “Steve just ducked right under the guard’s arm without him noticing.”

Cuddly though he may be, he also has bite – and isn’t afraid to ask awkward questions at events like Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, the annual four-hour-long presidential press conference. While the Russian hacks’ questions are tame – “Are you a happy person? Do you have a dream?” – Rosenberg is tactful but tough. At the last Direct Line, he asked Putin whether he felt he had taken good care of Russia, given the “substantial” military losses in Ukraine, plus sanctions and rampant inflation.

Putin obfuscated, claiming he’d saved Russia from an “abyss”. But at least the question had been asked. And even asking it is tough: Rosenberg rehearses his press conference questions like a Rachmaninoff piece, getting them pitch-perfect. “The last thing you want to do is mess it up while the whole world is watching.”

Putin, despite constant requests, has never granted him an interview, although Rosenberg does keep trying. “It would probably be the most challenging interview I’ve ever done, to try and find out what he really thinks about the war, and the wider world. He’s been in power now for more than a quarter of a century – there aren’t many other leaders on the planet in that position.”

Has he seen Putin change much in that time? “I think ‘early’ Putin believed he could restore Russia’s power and influence without falling out with the West – I remember him hosting the G8 and G20, he was there at the top table of global politics. ‘Putin 2026’ is bursting with bitterness and resentment over how he perceives the West treated Russia – without respect.

“International criticism of his war in Chechnya, ‘colour revolutions’ on Russia’s doorstep, [and] street protests in Russia fuelled a sense of paranoia that Western governments were somehow out to get him.”

Whether Rosenberg would get straight answers from Putin is, of course, another matter entirely. And there are certain subjects in Russia that the Kremlin does not like to talk about – as Rosenberg himself has sometimes found out the hard way.

In late 2014, he and his crew went to southern Russia to interview a family whose soldier son had been killed fighting in eastern Ukraine, at a time when the Kremlin was officially denying that its troops were there. After filing the raw footage, they were eating at a local restaurant when a carload of men arrived.

“Two of them got out, hit the cameraman and then smashed his camera,” Rosenberg recalls. “We spent several hours in the police station, where we were treated like suspects rather than victims. Someone also got into the boot of our car and wiped our computer’s hard disk, although we still ran the report as we’d already sent the raw footage. It was probably the local authorities taking exception to what we were doing. That doesn’t happen very often. But right now, there are certain stories that could get you into trouble.”

Anything war-related, for example, is hard to cover these days. Ordinary Russians, though, are still happy to be vox-popped in the street, and there are roundabout ways to bring up the “W” word.

“We ask, for example: ‘What’s worrying you?’ and most people mention the situation in Ukraine. Over the last year, more and more people know people who are fighting and getting killed. And, since the start of this year, the economic situation hasn’t been great either.”

Is he surprised at the level of ongoing support for the war (most polls suggest at least 50 per cent)? “To a degree, but I don’t see the country really rallying around the flag. There is a portion of the Russian population that does genuinely support what’s happening, but then there are others that find it convenient simply to believe the official propaganda that Russia is liberating eastern Ukraine, because it’s nicer to think that your country is doing the right thing.

“But there is this deep sense of fatigue now; people are just waiting for it to be over. A couple of years ago, people would say, ‘We hope it’s over soon with Russia’s victory’. The word ‘victory’, I don’t hear so much now.”

What about the war-hardened veterans and the families of the dead and injured? Might they force change? No sign of that yet, he says, and puts a health warning on his own predictions. Echoing Churchill’s famous comment that Russia is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”, Rosenberg likens it to a “thousand-piece jigsaw with 900 pieces missing”.

“You can’t make the whole picture, but the pieces available suggest that, at the very least, there is a lot of anxiety. But there will be change, because Russian history tells us that change happens.”

Whatever change there is, Rosenberg hopes to be there to report it. He feels he has already “seen four different Russias” – the end of the Soviet era, the lawless 1990s Russia, and Putin’s Russia both before and after the Ukraine invasion.

What the fifth Russia will be like is hard to say, but to quote Solovyov, the TV pundit, Rosenberg may still be roaming around it, looking “constantly surprised”.

“I’m still fascinated,” he says. “It’s not time to leave just yet.” Nor, despite Solovyov’s comments, does every Russian want to see the back of him.

“A few months ago, we did a story outside of Moscow where there was an exhibition dedicated to the ‘special military operation’, run by the mothers of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. We weren’t sure if they would let us film, but they did, and one of the mothers came up to me and whispered: ‘Thank you for not leaving Russia.’”