Journalist saga during Russia vs Ukraine’s war

JI-Moscow. The liberal-leaning Russian independent TV station Dozhd (TV Rain) resumed broadcasting on Monday evening from abroad after being forced to shut its Moscow studio following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Dozhd, portrayed in the 2021 film “Tango with Putin”, was visited and praised in 2011 by then-President Dmitry Medvedev when it was just a year old, and largely apolitical.
But like all Russian independent media, it has been harassed relentlessly since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012.
On Monday, it said it had received a European Union broadcasting licence and would be working from studios in Latvia, France and the Netherlands — as well as Georgia, where many Russians uncomfortable with the invasion have moved since February.
It will also stream on YouTube, which is not censored in Russia and is likely to be the only way most people in Russia will be able to see it.
A Moscow court has fined Google 21 billion rubles ($360 million) for failing to remove content concerning Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, the telecommunications regulator said Monday.
Roskomnadzor said the Google-owned video platform YouTube failed to block “false information” on the offensive in Ukraine, as well as “extremist and terrorist propaganda” and content “calling on minors to participate in unauthorised demonstrations”.
Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who shot to prominence for interrupting a live TV broadcast to denounce the invasion of Ukraine has been released after a few hours in custody.
“I am at home. Everything is fine,” she wrote on Facebook overnight. “Now I know it’s better to leave home with my passport and my bag,” she added.
Her lawyer, Dmitri Zakhvatov, said she was detained because she was suspected of having “discredited” the army in remarks outside a Moscow court last week in support of opposition activist Ilya Yashin, who is accused of spreading false information about the army.
Russian police on Sunday detained journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who in March interrupted a live TV broadcast to denounce the military action in Ukraine, her lawyer said.
No official statement has been made, but her detention comes a few days after 44-year-old Ovsyannikova demonstrated alone near the Kremlin holding a placard criticising Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin.
“Marina has been detained,” her entourage said in a message posted on the journalist’s Telegram account. “There is no information on where she is.”
The message included three photos of her being led by two police officers to a white van, after apparently having been stopped while cycling.