Ekho Moskvy, One Of Russia’s Last Independent Broadcasters, Closes Amid Government Crackdown

Ekho Moskvy chief Alek­sei Venedik­tov gives an inter­view at the radio sta­tion’s office in Moscow in 2019.

«By a major­i­ty vote of the board of direc­tors of Ekho Moskvy, a deci­sion was made to liq­ui­date the radio chan­nel and the web­site of Ekho Moskvy,» the broad­cast­er, one of the few remain­ing inde­pen­dent media out­lets in Rus­sia, said in a state­ment on Telegram.

The move comes after the Pros­e­cu­tor-Gen­er­al’s Office took the Ekho Moskvy radio sta­tion off the air for broad­cast­ing what the author­i­ties called infor­ma­tion «call­ing for extrem­ist activ­i­ties, vio­lence, and pre­med­i­tat­ed false infor­ma­tion» about Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

Anoth­er inde­pen­dent broad­cast­er, tele­vi­sion chan­nel Dozhd TV, announced on March 1 that its web­site was blocked in Rus­sia by order of the Pros­e­cu­tor-Gen­er­al’s Office amid a harsh crack­down by author­i­ties on inde­pen­dent media out­lets.

Ekho Moskvy first aired on August 22, 1990, in Moscow. Before the war with Ukraine, the radio sta­tion was tak­en off the air only once, dur­ing the State Com­mit­tee for the Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tion coup in 1991.

Nation­al media watch­dog Roskom­nad­zor has warned media across the coun­try that Rus­si­a’s actions in Ukraine can­not be called a «war» or an «inva­sion,» and should instead be referred to as a «spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Ukraine.»

The media reg­u­la­tor on Feb­ru­ary 28 blocked Cur­rent Time and the Crimea.Realities project of RFE/RL’s Ukrain­ian Ser­vice for refus­ing to delete their reports about the war in Ukraine.

On March 2, the edi­to­r­i­al offices of RFE/RL’s Russ­ian Ser­vice received six noti­fi­ca­tions from Roskom­nad­zor late on March 2 in which the Russ­ian media-mon­i­tor­ing agency threat­ened to block the ser­vice’s web­site amid ongo­ing cov­er­age of the con­flict in Ukraine.

RFE/RL last week reject­ed Roskom­nad­zor’s threat to block its Cur­rent Time web­site in Rus­sia unless it delet­ed infor­ma­tion about the inva­sion.