by Vietato Parlare – May 27, 2025
Read the full article in Italian
“In an age where conformity is rewarded and criticism outlawed, telling the truth from a different perspective has become a crime.”
This is, in essence, the story of Alina Lipp, a German journalist and blogger who has unwillingly become a symbol of the progressive shrinking of freedom of speech in Europe.
Who is Alina Lipp?
Born to a Russian mother and a German father, Alina Lipp moved to Donbass in 2021 to document firsthand what Western media were ignoring. Her Telegram channel, “Neues aus Russland” (“News from Russia”) – now with over 180,000 subscribers – offers a raw and unfiltered account of the war in southeastern Ukraine.
Her “crime”? Reporting a different narrative: the voices of Russian-speaking civilians bombed by Ukrainian artillery, NATO-supplied weapons hitting residential neighborhoods, and a population feeling abandoned by the West.
In 2022, German prosecutors opened a criminal case against her for “justifying war.” Her bank account was frozen, and she faced up to three years in prison simply for not reporting the war in a “neutral” way – that is, for not aligning with the dominant Western narrative.
Source: Junge Welt article, 2022
She was interviewed by Francesco Toscano for Visione TV, where she detailed her story with clarity and courage, denouncing censorship and state repression.
EU Sanctions: A Dangerous Precedent
On May 20, 2025, the case took a darker turn: the EU officially included Lipp in its sanctions package against Russia, along with fellow German blogger Thomas Röper and Turkish journalist Hüseyin Doğru.
Source: EU Council Official Statement
Her assets in the EU were frozen again. She is now banned from traveling to or through EU countries. These are the first-ever EU sanctions against EU citizens purely for their opinions. The charge? “Destabilizing activities” and “systematic disinformation”.
She responded with sarcasm, writing on X (Twitter) that she wouldn’t return to Europe “unless it’s on a tank.”
But behind the irony lies a serious truth: freedom of expression is under attack.
When Truth Is Singular
We live in a world where NATO can call the 1999 bombing of Serbia “Operation Allied Force”, but Alina Lipp is not allowed to refer to the war in Donbass as a “special operation.”
Source: NATO – Operation Allied Force
In such a context, we are no longer dealing with journalism or free information – we are witnessing institutionalized propaganda.
Those who show civilian victims are not punished for lying, but for showing what must not be seen.
The war in Ukraine is tragic, but denying its roots – which go back to the 2014 Donbass massacres – is not journalism: it’s complicity.
Source: OSCE Reports on Donbass (2014–2021)
From Alina Lipp’s Telegram channel:
“What’s happening here, what the Western propaganda hides, is a reality that deserves to be told. I won’t stop.”
Source: Neues aus Russland Telegram
Alina Lipp and the Criminalization of Thought
The German magazine Junge Welt wrote in 2022:
“Having an opinion and expressing it – that’s what makes a country free.”
Source: Junge Welt article
If expressing an opinion becomes a criminal offense, then democratic values become just an empty shell.
Alina Lipp does not have to please everyone. She can be biased. She can be wrong. But she must have the right to speak.
Prosecuting her for what she thinks and says is not justice – it’s a warning to anyone who dares to dissent.
A Call to Conscience
Defending Alina Lipp today means defending our own right to think, speak, and tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.
It means resisting a system that punishes ideas and freezes accounts of those who don’t conform.
Freedom of expression is not a privilege – it is a non-negotiable right.
“If one journalist is punished not for what she has done, but for what she thinks and says – then no one is safe anymore.”