Galina Timchenko on exile, journalism and Russia today

Interview format test

This article body is intentionally varied so the backend can fetch rich Notion blocks before the Astro renderer exists.

Independent media in exile is not only a question of publishing. It is a question of audience, trust and institutional memory.

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Block rendering test

A grab-bag of Notion blocks for visual testing.

Headings

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Text formatting

Plain paragraph with bold, italic, strikethrough, underline, inline code, and a link.

Inline color examples: red text, green background, purple text.

Inline math: E = mc^2 and \int_0^\infty e^{-x^2}\,dx = \tfrac{\sqrt{\pi}}{2}.

Lists

• Bulleted item one
• Bulleted item two
  • Nested bullet
    • Deeper nested bullet
• Bulleted item three

1. Numbered item one
2. Numbered item two
   1. Nested numbered
   2. Nested numbered
3. Numbered item three

To-dos

Quotes

A single-line quote block.

Multi-line quote: Line two of the quote. Line three with bold and italic.

Divider

Code

def greet(name: str) -> str:
    """Say hi."""
    return f"Hello, {name}!"

print(greet("Alex"))

flowchart LR
	A["Start"] --> B{"Decision?"}
	B -- Yes --> C["Do the thing"]
	B -- No --> D["Skip it"]
	C --> E["End"]
	D --> E

Equation block

\hat{\beta} = (X^\top X)^{-1} X^\top y

Callouts

Toggles

Toggle heading

Columns

Table

Image

https://picsum.photos/seed/onrs-test/1200/600

Table of contents

Paragraphs of different sizes

Short.

A single, slightly longer sentence to test how a one-liner wraps inside the article column.

A medium-length paragraph that runs across two or three lines on most screens. It exists to check line-height, hyphenation behaviour, and how body copy sits next to headings and callouts above. Nothing here is load-bearing — it is just enough text to fill the reading width comfortably without spilling into a wall of prose.

A longer paragraph designed to stress-test typography across a wider range of widths. Independent journalism in exile, like the kind discussed in the interview above, often depends on infrastructure that is invisible to readers: secure publishing pipelines, distributed editorial teams, redundancy of hosting, and a careful approach to source protection. When we render long-form articles on the ONRS website, we want body text at this length to remain readable on both narrow mobile viewports and wider desktop columns, with consistent spacing above and below adjacent blocks such as quotes, callouts, and images.

And finally, a substantial block of prose to see how the renderer behaves when a single paragraph carries real weight. The history of Russian-language independent media is, in many ways, a history of relocation — of newsrooms reconstituting themselves in Riga, Berlin, Tbilisi, Amsterdam, and elsewhere, often more than once. Each move brings with it a fresh set of legal, financial, and editorial constraints, and yet the core editorial mission tends to survive: to document, to verify, and to publish without flinching. For a site like this one, which sits somewhere between a cultural hub and an editorial outlet, getting the long-paragraph reading experience right matters as much as the headline image or the table of contents above. Spacing, measure, leading, and the relationship between paragraphs and the surrounding blocks all contribute to whether a reader stays with a piece to the end — or bounces after the first scroll.

Nested block combinations

Callout inside a toggle

Toggle inside a callout

Nested toggles (three levels)

Colored blocks

Plain paragraph, no colour.

A gray paragraph for secondary information.

A red paragraph for warnings or errors.

A blue-background paragraph for info highlights.

Colored heading

• Orange bulleted item
• Green-background bulleted item

1. Red numbered item
2. Purple numbered item

A brown-background quote for editorial aside.

Multi-language code blocks

const fetchArticle = async (slug) => {
  const res = await fetch(`/api/articles/${slug}`);
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Article not found: ${slug}`);
  return res.json();
};

.article-body {
  max-width: 42rem;
  margin: 0 auto;
  font-family: "Georgia", serif;
  line-height: 1.7;
  color: var(--text-primary);
}

.article-body blockquote {
  border-left: 3px solid var(--accent);
  padding-left: 1rem;
  font-style: italic;
}

#!/bin/bash
curl -s "https://api.notion.com/v1/pages/$PAGE_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NOTION_TOKEN" \
  -H "Notion-Version: 2022-06-28" | jq '.properties.Title'

SELECT a.title, a.author, a.publication_date
FROM articles a
JOIN tags t ON t.article_id = a.id
WHERE t.name = 'culture'
  AND a.status = 'published'
ORDER BY a.publication_date DESC
LIMIT 10;

Synced block

This is a synced block. Any copy of this block elsewhere will mirror these contents automatically.

Columns with complex children

Deeply nested list

• Level 1
  • Level 2
    • Level 3
      • Level 4 — this tests deep indentation
        • Level 5 — maximum practical depth
      • Back to level 4
    • Back to level 3
  • Back to level 2
• Another level 1 item

Quotes in all sizes and colours

Default (no colour)

A quote with no colour applied — the default style.

Text colours

Gray text quote.

Brown text quote.

Orange text quote.

Yellow text quote.

Green text quote.

Blue text quote.

Purple text quote.

Pink text quote.

Red text quote.

Background colours

Gray background quote.

Brown background quote.

Orange background quote.

Yellow background quote.

Green background quote.

Blue background quote.

Purple background quote.

Pink background quote.

Red background quote.

Multi-line quotes

Multi-line default quote: Second line of the quote. Third line with bold and italic.

Multi-line gray quote: Line two. Line three.

Multi-line blue background quote: Line two with inline code. Line three with strikethrough.

Quotes with rich formatting

Bold quote with italic and code inside.

Quote with E = mc^2 inline math and a link.

Strikethrough quote with underline text.

Red inline text inside a blue inline text quote.

Attributed quotes

Memory is a form of resistance — it refuses to let history be rewritten.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Links in different colours

Default link: Notion homepage

Text-coloured links

Gray link to Wikipedia

Brown link to Meduza

Orange link to Hacker News

Yellow link to GitHub

Green link to MDN

Blue link to Astro docs

Purple link to Notion API

Pink link to Figma

Red link to Stack Overflow

Background-coloured links

Gray background link

Brown background link

Orange background link

Yellow background link

Green background link

Blue background link

Purple background link

Pink background link

Red background link

Mixed formatting with coloured links

A paragraph with bold red link, italic blue link, and green background link with code inline.

• Purple link in a bullet
• Orange background link in a bullet

Quote with a red link and a blue background link inside.

Footnotes test

Independent media in exile is not only a question of publishing.^{[1]} It is a question of audience, trust and institutional memory.^{[2]} When newsrooms relocate, they must rebuild not just infrastructure but credibility^{[3]} — a process that can take years and is never truly complete.

The concept of "media in exile" has deep historical roots.^{[4]} From samizdat to satellite broadcasts, the mechanisms change but the core tension remains: how to reach an audience that the state would prefer stayed uninformed.^{[5]}

Galina Timchenko has argued that solidarity between exiled outlets matters more than competition,^{[1]} a view shared by several other editors-in-chief across the diaspora.^{[6]}

References

1. Timchenko, G. (2024). "Building Meduza from scratch." Press Gazette, 12 March 2024.
2. Khodorkovsky, M. (2023). "Institutional memory and the Russian free press." Open Russia Papers, vol. 7, pp. 14–31.
3. Lipman, M. & McFaul, M. (2022). "Media credibility after relocation." Journal of Democracy, 33(2), 89–104.
4. Stelmakh, V. (2019). "Samizdat to servers: a short history of exiled publishing." Slavic Review, 78(1), 201–218.
5. RSF (2023). "Press freedom and digital reach in authoritarian states." Reporters Without Borders annual report.
6. Galperovich, D. (2024). "Cooperation over competition: voices from the Russian media diaspora." The Moscow Times, 5 June 2024.

Toggles showcase

Plain toggles

Coloured toggles

Toggle headings (all levels)

Toggle Heading 1

Toggle Heading 2

Toggle Heading 3

Coloured toggle headings

Red Toggle H1

Blue Toggle H2

Green background Toggle H3

Nested toggles

Toggle with complex children

interface FootnoteRef {
  id: number;
  text: string;
  source: string;
}

function renderFootnote(ref: FootnoteRef): string {
  return `<sup><a href="#fn-${ref.id}">[${ref.id}]</a></sup>`;
}

\nabla \times \mathbf{E} = -\frac{\partial \mathbf{B}}{\partial t}

Toggle heading with nested toggle heading

Outer toggle heading

Side-by-side toggles in columns

Toggles showcase

Plain toggles

Coloured toggles

Toggle headings (all levels)

Toggle Heading 1

Toggle Heading 2

Toggle Heading 3

Coloured toggle headings

Red Toggle H1

Blue Toggle H2

Green background Toggle H3

Nested toggles (five levels deep)

Toggle with complex children

interface FootnoteRef {
  id: number;
  text: string;
  source: string;
}

function renderFootnote(ref: FootnoteRef): string {
  return `<sup><a href="#fn-${ref.id}">[${ref.id}]</a></sup>`;
}

\nabla \times \mathbf{E} = -\frac{\partial \mathbf{B}}{\partial t}

Toggle containing an image

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Caption text below the image, inside the toggle.

Toggle heading with nested toggle heading

Outer toggle heading

Side-by-side toggles in columns

Callouts showcase

Basic callouts (no colour)

Common use-case callouts

All background colours

All text colours

Callouts with rich text

Callouts with child blocks

Nested callouts

Callout with a toggle inside

Callouts in columns

Callout with long content

Images showcase

A comprehensive test of image rendering — Notion-hosted uploads, external URLs from multiple sources, various dimensions, captions, colours, and nesting contexts.

Notion-hosted images (uploaded/attached)

Full-width Notion attachment:

Two Notion attachments in columns

External images — Unsplash

Full-width Unsplash image:

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Three Unsplash images in columns

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Two Unsplash images back-to-back

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External images — Picsum (various dimensions)

Landscape (1200 × 600)

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Square (800 × 800)

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Portrait / tall (600 × 900)

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Panoramic / ultra-wide (1600 × 400)

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Small thumbnail (200 × 200)

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Images with and without captions

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The image above intentionally has no caption — testing that the renderer handles empty alt text gracefully.

Images with coloured blocks

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Images inside callouts

Images inside toggles

Toggle with a Notion-hosted image

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Toggle with an external Unsplash image

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A description paragraph after the image.

Mixed-source image gallery in columns

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Notion attachment

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Unsplash

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Wikimedia

External images from other sources

Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons

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Placeholder services

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Edge cases

Very wide image (2400 × 400)

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Very tall image (400 × 1200)

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Tiny image (50 × 50)

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Image with text-wrap context

The following image sits between two paragraphs to test vertical spacing and how body copy flows around full-width images. This matters for the Astro renderer since editorial articles frequently alternate between prose blocks and inline imagery.

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This is the paragraph immediately after the image. The renderer should produce consistent vertical margins above and below the image block, matching the rhythm of paragraph-to-paragraph spacing elsewhere on the page.

Images uploaded in HEIC

Same images converted to JPEG

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