The old Dozhd headquarters in Russia. The new one in Latvia is now closed.
Image: Reuters
The opposition TV channel Dozhd was blocked in Russia, then relocated to Latvia and lost its license there this week. But is this scandal really just about a single sentence?
“We hope that we were able to help many soldiers, including with equipment and basic equipment at the front,” said the anchor Alexei Korostelev on December 1 in the live broadcast of the opposition Russian channel Dozhd – meaning the mobilized in the Russian army. This sentence triggered a chain of events that first led to the revocation of the broadcasting license in Latvia and then to the festival of self-exposure in the ranks of the exiled Russian opposition figures.
Many of them today depend on the help of European democracies. And, as is now becoming increasingly clear, obviously convinced that they have an unconditional right to this aid, but would not do every country the honor of accepting it. This is to be understood quite literally. The Estonian philologist and journalist Jan Levchenko addresses precisely this attitude of the new exiles in his commentary in the newspaper “Postimees”: When the city of Narva became the host of the now homeless Moscow drama festival “Lubimovka”, a representative of the project spoke at the press conference said: “The oldest festival of Russian drama does a great honor to the countries that made their venues available to it.”