opinion
“Second Front” in Russia
The last free TV station chooses the partisan end – and the world becomes even darker
Director General of the Dozhd channel Natalya Sindeyeva and the main investor Alexander Vinokurov during a live broadcast in 2014. For twelve years, Dozhd fought against the Kremlin’s censorship.
© Sergei Chirikov / Picture Alliance
For twelve years, Dozhd fought for freedom of speech. Despite all threats and adversities: Russia’s last free TV station continued its work and desperately fought back the Kremlin’s propaganda. Now this window is also closing into a land that is sinking into darkness.
For twelve years, the day has started for millions of people with the sentence “Good morning, this is Dozhd speaking” – in Russia, in the Ukraine, in Kazakhstan, in the Baltic States and also in Germany. It was Dozhd that was the only Russian TV station to report on the mass protests after the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections. It was Dozhd reporters who stood on the Maidan in 2014 and braved the hail of bullets. It was Dozhd who gave the Russian opposition a public voice. And it was Dozhd who defied the Kremlin in recent weeks and showed the Ukraine war for what it is: a war.
In recent months, Dozhd has become one of the most important Russian media outlets. When the war in Ukraine began, which the Russian authorities perfidiously dubbed a “military special operation,” 25 million people watched on YouTube alone how Putin’s “peacekeepers” turned Ukraine into a field of suffering and pain – every day.
Dozhd, that was one of the last showcases in a country that is inexorably sinking into darkness. Not only for the Russian people, but also for the whole world. Dozhd lifted the informative ironclad order that the Kremlin imposes on Russia. Until now.
“Part of my soul has died”
The curtain was drawn on Thursday evening: “We have never had to make such a difficult decision in our lives. We have decided that we will stop the station’s work for the time being,” announced Natalya Sindeeva, general director of Dozhd, with tears in her eyes the bad news. “We need strength now and some time to breathe out and understand how to continue working.”
The Dozhd team bids farewell to their viewers in tears
© Screenshot Youtube Dozhd
It’s just meant to be a passing broadcast stops. And yet it is clear to everyone right now that the break could be a long one. The station’s employees stand behind Sindeeva and can hardly hold back their tears. The spectators cry with them. “Part of my soul has died,” someone wrote during the last live broadcast for the time being.
Faced with the choice of lying or staying silent, Dozhd chooses the only right thing to do
On Friday morning, the Russian parliament passed a law providing for up to 15 years in prison for spreading alleged false reports about the “activities of the military forces of Russia”. But what is fake is determined by the Kremlin. The term war is also considered a fake. While Putin’s troops are bombing Ukrainian cities, the Kremlin has opened a second front at home: independent media are the enemy here.
The new law obliges them to lie. Faced with the choice of lying or staying silent, Dozhd chooses the only right thing to do. It is a desperate act by partisans who would rather die than become an accomplice to a bloody regime. It’s an honorable ending. Hopefully not definitive. The world is too gloomy without Dozhd. Regen means the name of the station in German. The desire for rain has seldom been greater than now.