Status: 08/26/2022 04:59 am
The US-financed broadcaster “Radio Free Europe” reaches millions of people in Eastern Europe. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the mission has become difficult: employees speak of a Cold War situation.
Volodymyr Mychajlov had packed his suitcase for six weeks when he left Kyiv for Prague in February. The Ukrainian journalist had not planned to stay there much longer. Since 2020 he has been working for the Russian-language TV news channel “Nastoyashcheye Vremja”, in German “present”. The station’s headquarters are in Prague. Mykhailov had traveled there for a training course. When the Russian invasion began on February 24, he and his colleagues were shocked. “A friend wrote to me that explosions could be heard from my neighborhood. I saw pictures of military equipment on the streets of Kyiv on social media,” he recalls.
Volodymyr Mychajlow originally comes from Donetsk and has been moderating “Nastoyashcheye Vremja” for two years.
On that day, “Nastoyashcheye Vremja” broadcast live almost around the clock. Mykhailov moderated the special program on the war for three hours, after which he was replaced by a colleague. In between, he looked at his cell phone and read new messages from his friends in Kyiv. “It wasn’t easy to just continue to moderate after that. My voice wasn’t as strong as usual,” he says.
Topic overview
war in Ukraine
Funded by the US Congress
The station “Nastoyashcheje Vremja” belongs to “Radio Free Europe”https://www.tagesschau.de/”Radio Liberty”, a broadcasting corporation financed by the USA. It was founded during the Cold War, when the USA wanted to reach out to the people in the Eastern European and Central Asian communist-ruled states. Radio Free Europe has been based in Prague since 1995 and produces broadcasts and online content for 23 countries in 27 languages - reporting for regions of the world where freedom of the press is severely restricted.
Even if the money comes from the US Congress in Washington, the journalists are independent in their work, says broadcaster Jamie Fly. “Just like foreign broadcasters like Deutsche Welle, we take our independence very seriously. We have controls in place to ensure that no US official can dictate what and how we should report.” The role of “Radio Free Europe” is not to spread a certain image of the USA, says Fly: “We report on topics that are important to our local audience.”
Work undercover in Russia
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the station’s work has become even more dangerous. Journalist Vira Hyrych, who reported for Radio Free Europe, was killed in a Russian attack on Kyiv in April. Meanwhile, free reporting is hardly possible in Russia. Supplying journalists can only work undercover in the country. The station has closed its Moscow office.
Some of the Moscow staff have left Russia and are now working in Prague, including radio presenter Mariana Torochechnikova. She came to the Czech capital in 2021, when the station’s work in Russia was becoming increasingly difficult. In Moscow she left her husband and adult daughter behind. Her husband is attached to his job in Moscow and would not easily get a work permit in the EU, she says. He recently visited her in Prague: “We meet regularly on neutral territory – like in a spy film.”
Jamie Fly has been Director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty since 2021.
VPN clients and IP address changes
Her job in Prague is no longer the same as in Moscow, says Maryana Torocheschnikova: she can only connect people who appear on her show via Skype or Zoom. “Very rarely does anyone come to my studio. For example, they are people who also emigrated from Russia because of the political situation.”
Despite difficult working conditions, interest in the station has not waned. Since the beginning of the war, the program has reached three times as many people as before, says director Fly – even though it’s not so easy to access the content from Russia: The websites of “Radio Free Europe” are blocked there, as are social networks such as Russia Facebook and Instagram were declared extremist and officially banned. “That’s why we change the addresses of our websites several times a day to be faster than the Kremlin censorship,” he explains.
Many people in Russia also use so-called VPN clients, with which they can bypass the blocks. “We see our Russian audience using these tools. But it’s a game of cat and mouse. We’re trying to be faster than the censors. And they’re improving their techniques to block our websites.”
It all feels a little like it was back in the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and its allies used jammers and “Radio Free Europe” had to change frequencies regularly. “Users have similar experiences as they did back then. They have to make an extra effort to get independent information.”