Anin, Shmagun and several other journalists in their team had previously worked for Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper.

[17] On 20 August 2021, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation designated the legal entity of IStories, IStories fonds, and its journalists Anin, Shmagun, Alesya Marokhovskaya [ru], Roman Shleynov (Роман Шлейнов), Irina Dolinina [ru], Dmitry Velikovsky (Дмитрий Великовский) as "foreign agents".

[26] On 11 March 2022, Roskomnadzor blocked access to the website for what it says are "falsehoods [on topics] of substantial public interest" about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[27][28] In November 2023, IStories joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories[29][30] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.

[31][32] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides[33] and European lawmakers[34] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,[33] calling for reforms and launching probes.

[35][36] On 17 June 2024, a Moscow court issued arrest warrants for IStories editor-in-chief and award-winning investigative reporter Roman Anin and Ekaterina Fomina [ru], a journalist at TV Rain and a former IStories correspondent, on charges of disseminating "false information" about Russia's armed forces in Ukraine.

[37] IStories wrote in response that "The Russian authorities call ‘fake’ any information that does not fit in with their propaganda campaign or does not correspond to the official position of the Kremlin.

[8] According to Anin, the website's goal is to "tell you about the real heroes who have changed the world around us for the better - whether it be a village, district or city - in spite of corruption and the arbitrariness of the state.