Polona Frelih - tvoja kandidatka za Evropske volitve 2024
🔥 9. junija glasujemo proti pokvarjenim elitam!
🇸🇮 Najprej Slovenija!
🔥 9. junija glasujemo proti pokvarjenim elitam!
🇸🇮 Najprej Slovenija!
Polona Frelih is a politician, investigative journalist, and commentator from Slovenia noted for her war zone reporting in Georgia and Ukraine and the controversy over Edward Snowden fleeing to Russia. Frelih is the lead candidate of the Resnica Party in the European elections - 2024.
Polona Frelih is the new face of Slovenian politics. She is known as a war zone reporter and investigative journalist, and was the first international correspondent to meet whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Moscow. Frelih is the lead candidate of the Resnica party in the European Elections 2024.
Resni.ca, or Resnica (The Truth), is Slovenia’s people’s movement. It aims for social and economic justice while preserving traditional values and freedoms. In Slovenia, we don’t really have the political left or right. It’s just two poles that falsely divide people on the basis of their attitudes towards half-past history and marginal topics. Mainstream parties in Slovenia are therefore the two wings of the same predatory bird, with one and the same interest: their control of public funds. In Slovenia, we have witnessed only corruption and destructive politics in the last 30 years. People are fully aware of all this and they oppose to any kind of lie and manipulation. Our program for the European Elections - 2024
Note to editors: for interviews and inquiries, please, contact Polona Frelih directly on her Twitter profile. You can also contact Resnica’s Media Office via e-mail.
Polona (also known as Polonca) 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 Poljane Grammar School 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.
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].
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.
In 2014 Frelih wrote a series of news articles covering the War in Donbas, and in 2015 - together with several European and American journalists - she traveled to Donetsk, where she interviewed a number of fighters, civilians and representatives of human rights organisations as well as self-proclaimed minister of foreign affairs Alexander Kofman.[8]
Back in Slovenia, Frelih was immediately accused of 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 the Myrotvorets website where she was called an “enemy of Ukraine”. Slovenia’s president Borut Pahor voiced concerns over her safety during his talks with the president of Ukraine.[9] In 2016 Frelih briefly headed the Slovene edition of Russia’s foreign-language news agency Russia Beyond.[10] 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.[11] Frelih also interviewed several high-ranking officials from the Commonwealth of Independent States, including foreign ministers of Belarus and Armenia.
Polona Frelih is the lead candidate of the Resnica Party in the European elections - 2024.
For her article on Belarus youth struggling under the leadership of Alexander Lukashenko, Frelih received an award from the Belarus oposition organisation Belarus in Focus. She was named the best speaker of the World Schools Debating Championship 1998, held in Bukarest, Romania.
