‘Ukrainians fight for their homeland, Russians fight for Putin’s ambitions’, declared the TV presenter on his YouTube channel earlier this year. This was not a Ukrainian propagandist. In fact, the commentator was Russian and talking on ‘TV Rain’, the most popular and effective opposition channel broadcasting into Russia.
In TV Rain’s final programme from Moscow before the station was forced to shut down and move abroad, the founder declared: ‘No to war. Putin cannot win the war’. In exile, the channel remained robust. ‘The war has no justification and has to be stopped’, says the editor Tikhon Dzyadko. ‘Russia must withdraw its troops from Ukraine’.
The most effective vehicle of mobilising opposition to the war in Russia is likely to go bankrupt because of sanctions
Last July and during one week in September, at the time of partial mobilisation of the Russian people, the channel received an estimated 50 million views and broadcast news into Russia for up to five hours a day.
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