Striking pictures of urban decay, including Soviet-era bomb shelters overgrown with weeds and the crumbling remains of factories across Eastern Europe, won a Russian photographer hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers eager to track her travels.
But these days, the photographer, Svetlana Timofeyeva, 34, cannot travel much to satisfy fans of her exploits. Her passport was confiscated by the authorities in Albania, where she spent much of the past year in a women’s jail detained on accusations that have gained her a different kind of fame: that she is a Russian spy.
She has denied those accusations, saying that geopolitical tensions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have made her and her compatriots suspect in the eyes of many Europeans — even those who, like her, have opposed the war.
“People don’t think about Russians as victims of this government, but we are,” she said in a recent interview at a cafe in Tirana, the capital. “Everyone is watching you. Everyone looks at you suspiciously.”
Ms. Timofeyeva and two other fellow “urban explorers” — Mikhail Zorin, a Russian student, and Fedir Alpatov, a Ukrainian — were arrested last August on suspicion of espionage after being caught at a derelict weapons factory in a remote part of Albania.
They say that they were there to explore the plant and take pictures. They deny that they were spying.
But Mr. Zorin has also acknowledged that he pepper-sprayed the factory’s guards after they approached him, and he later said during questioning by the police that he was a Russian agent. That admission, Mr. Zorin said in an interview, was coerced.
The three urban explorers were held in jails for nine months until a court ordered their release on May 25, although Mr. Zorin was placed under house arrest. They are now barred from leaving Albania until an indictment is brought or the charges are dropped.
That has forced them into a strange life of limbo in Tirana, where they share a two-bedroom apartment to save money, reliant on the generosity of family and friends to stay afloat financially.
Without her equipment, which was confiscated by the authorities, Ms. Timofeyeva says she cannot earn money as she used to, making videos and photographs for weddings and corporate events.
So she spends her days traveling around Albania with Mr. Alpatov, who declined to be interviewed for this article, in his orange Chevy Camaro, which he brought with him from Italy, where he lives, according to Ms. Timofeyeva. They sometimes get visitors from abroad.
The situation is strangest for Mr. Zorin, 24, who had been studying in Prague before he set off on a planned cycling trip to Greece, with Albania intended as a pit stop to meet Ms. Timofeyeva and Mr. Alpatov. Confined to the apartment, he spends much of his time chatting with friends online.
“It’s quite similar to becoming a cat,” he said of his existence, wearing a cat T-shirt on a reporter’s recent visit to the apartment. “You depend on…
2023-07-02 11:55:02
Original from www.nytimes.com
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