Vitaly Soldatskikh

Vitaly Soldatskikh was selected for the 2024 Shortlist with Lapdogs of War: A Guide to Russia’s Wartime Oligarchs.

Vitalii Soldatskikh is an investigative journalist working for the Russian independent outlet Proekt.

He began his career as a journalist specialising in finance in 2013. For the first seven years, he worked in both private and state media, covering the operations of the Russian economy and the financial sector amid international sanctions. Specifically, from 2018 to 2020, he worked at “Kommersant”, the leading Russian daily business newspaper at the time.

In 2022, he pivoted to investigative journalism with Proekt, an outlet that is banned in Russia. In the sphere of his interests are topics of corruption among the most significant Russian officials and oligarchs, as well as their economic support of the aggressive war.

Björn af Kleen

Björn af Kleen was selected for the 2024 Shortlist with Four Hundred Boys Came Into Contact With Sweden’s Celebrated Foster Father – Several Tell of Abuse

Björn af Kleen, born in 1980, is a reporter at large at Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest morning newspaper. He’s been a correspondent in Washington DC, worked as an investigative reporter in Stockholm and currently reports from New York City on the American election year of 2024. He has written several non-fiction books about the Swedish elite.