Julia Ioffe focuses on Dozhd, the last independent TV channel in the country, and its struggle to stay alive:
Given the youth and often shoestring budget of the staff, its shows can feel raw and unprofessional, but the steady pressure on the channel has instilled fear in their advertisers, not letting Dozhd expand, despite having the most educated and wealthy audience in Russia. And why do high-grossing urban professionals tune in, despite the sometimes high-school paper feel of the channel? There’s nothing else on television in Russia that isn’t controlled by the Kremlin in one way or another. On Dozhd, you can actually get information, rather than propaganda.
Now Dozhd has months to live. Earlier this month, Natalia Sindeeva, the channel’s owner, drastically cut salaries and announced that Dozhd had, at most, three months left. Then the building’s owners told her that Dozhd had to vacate its headquarters by June. Sindeeva said it’s not clear that the lights would or could come back on after such an expensive move. And that’s if anyone decides to let in a liberal entity that’s fallen from the Kremlin’s favor.
Joshua Yaffa also chronicles the crackdown on Russia’s opposition media:
As the space for independent journalism shrinks, the propaganda apparatus is working at feverish speed. Dmitry Kiselyov, a television host and media executive who represents the id of the state propaganda machine at its most grotesque, blamed this same fifth column for the sanctions imposed against more than thirty Russian and Ukrainian officials by the European Union. Kiselyov, who was among those sanctioned, cited Putin’s speech as evidence to blame the fifth column for compiling the blacklist. “Putin legalized that term in the political language of Russia,” he said. “We know their names. We know how they wrote our names and sent them to these Western embassies.”
Irina Kalinina looks at Russian TV’s portrayal of Ukraine:
Perhaps the most vivid propagandist on Russian television, especially these last few weeks, is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the vice chairman of the Russian Duma, who recently proposed to divide Ukraine between Russia, Poland, Romania, and Hungary. Most Ukrainians and a lot of Russians as well have long considered Zhirinovsky a fool for his tendency to make exceedingly strange proposals. He has advocated, for example, that Russia seize Alaska and use it as a deportation dumping ground for Ukrainians. Not long ago, he claimed that a meteor shower was a test of a new American weapon.
These days, Zhirinovsky is no less surreal in his predictions—but we find ourselves wondering if there just might be a suggestion of Russian policy in his pronouncements. “If you want presidential elections in Ukraine,” he said on Russian television, “you want fascists to win them.” There is a certain twisted logic to this. Russian policy in Ukraine is based upon the strange premise that only Russia can protect the world from Ukrainian fascism. (In fact the opposite is true: The only way radicals in Ukraine would have a chance is if Russia continues its invasion of the country.)
The Dish 