Everyone cried at TV Rain, a Russian television channel in Amsterdam, when the news came in about the death of political prisoner Alexei Navalny. Not only because the alleged murder was a blow to the waning Russian opposition, says presenter and editor-in-chief Tikhon Dzjadko a month later, but also because it was a personal loss – many journalists from TV Rain knew Navalny well and admired his courage. “It also feels like a warning to us.” Just like the hammer attack on Navalny confidant Leonid Volkov on Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
TV Rain, or Dozhd (Russian for rain), became founded in 2008 to create intellectual entertainment for the new middle class. But just as quickly as Russian repression increased, the show disappeared from broadcasts. Editor-in-chief Dzjadko (36) thinks that's a shame, he likes to make entertainment, he says without moving a muscle.
When TV Rain was completely banned after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the editorial staff left Moscow in a hurry – with only a few cameras and microphones. The only independent Russian TV channel has been operating from exile for two years. First from Latvia, Georgia and France, among others, and since the summer of 2023 mainly from Amsterdam.
It's a lot of cramming in this office, where the now fully equipped recording studio is right next to the editorial office. During the recordings, only a folding screen separates the presenters from the editors – who therefore have to be completely silent. When presenter Yekaterina Kotrikadze (39) records stand-ups for her afternoon shows, the teleprompter and camera are even placed in the middle of the desks. Time and again, Kotrikadze, heavily covered in make-up, tries to pronounce her lines fluently. Nine times out of ten she ends with “blah.” Until it looks good. And then the buzz and rattle of keyboards swells. There is also a lot of laughter among the editors.
This news week focuses on the Russian elections. But if Vladimir Putin wins a new six-year term on Sunday evening, there will be no tears of fear here. Mikhail Fishman, one of the three well-known faces of the channel with Kotrikadze and Dzjadko, predicts at the beginning of the week that the winner Putin will receive 77 percent of the votes. “Just a little more than the Kremlin's fake polls.”
The elections are just as fake, says Fishman (51), as he wipes the rain from his round glasses with his sweater, but not unimportant. “Elections are the milestones in Putin's regime and he sees them as an opportunity to implement new laws. After each election, Putin evolves into a new, even more repressive creature.”
This week, TV Rain also pays a lot of attention to the cautious protest that is expected. Fishman cannot estimate how many people will participate in the symbolic action of voting on Sunday at noon. He himself votes on Sunday at noon in The Hague. “Large participation will not topple the regime, but every little bit helps.”
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Chinese tea
Remote reporting is also possible. Due to the corona pandemic, the editors were already used to speaking to people via Zoom, for example, but since then Russians have become much more afraid. Since the war in Ukraine, it is even illegal to give interviews to TV Rain. Yet the channel manages to tap into sources in Russia, not only thanks to their old network, but also because the loyal Russian viewers of the YouTube channel where TV Rain broadcasts supply information. This way, TV Rain was able to report on Navalny's funeral with many videos and photos.
YouTube is not banned in Russia – not yet, thinks editor-in-chief Dzjadko. On that platform, TV Rain has 14 million viewers per month, spread throughout Russia. Outside Russia, TV Rain has another 22 million unique visitors. The editorial team consists of about 110 people, the vast majority are in Amsterdam, but there are also editors in Georgia, Latvia, Armenia and (undercover) in Russia. Revenue comes in through subscribers, advertisements and donors (from outside Russia).
The reason Dozjd ultimately moved to Amsterdam is that the editorial team was allowed to move in with DPG Media for free, after mediation by the Dutch publisher Derk Sauer, who had previously published his Russian newspaper The Moscow Times came to Amsterdam. It was also not difficult to obtain work and residence permits for all staff in the Netherlands, with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After mediation by the municipality, an Amsterdam real estate agent arranged for all Russian journalists and their partners and children, about a hundred and fifty people in all, to have priority when renting apartments.
This is how Michaïl Fishman ended up with his wife – also a journalist at TV Rain – and their six-year-old daughter in an upstairs apartment in De Pijp. He mainly works at home, on his weekly show: a 'personal' news overview. There used to be a lot of jokes in it, but nowadays it's less funny. “The reality is too grim.” But sometimes the news demands it. The American conservative presenter Tucker Carlson who visited Putin was, of course, taking the bait. “The elections are also fun.”
In Moscow Fishman is often recognized on the street, here he leads a quite anonymous and isolated existence. He sometimes drinks a beer with his downstairs neighbor and knows tennis. He thinks the Dutch are very nice. He learns the language, because he realizes: he will stay here for the time being.
Tikhon Dzjadko also seems completely acclimatized, with his fashionable raincoat. He regularly goes outside to smoke. You might imagine that Dzjadko and Fishman, both noticeably tall and thin, are targets of the Russian regime. But they move freely through the office building and the city.
They feel safe here, they say. Even though they know that's not the case, and they are on their guard. For example, Fishman recently received a package delivered to his home, the contents of which he could not guess. After a few days of thinking, he took the box to the police for investigation. And the moment he delivered it, he remembered. It was of course that Chinese tea, from his brother-in-law.
The editorial staff is also taking precautions, says editor-in-chief Dzjadko. Especially technical, against computer viruses. “But I know that it could suddenly be over for us,” said Dzjadko. He points to the German research into possible poisoning of Russian journalists in exile. Dozjd therefore does not just allow people into the editorial office.
There is a lot of contact with their Russian colleagues The Moscow Times and news site Meduza, a few doors down. Before the war, competitors often argued via social media. Now they feel strongly connected to each other. They also see each other at home, after work. Sometimes they sing Russian songs.
Hoodie and face paint
Margarita Lyutova (34), economics editor at Meduza, confirms the solidarity in Amsterdam. But she also criticizes the Russian media in exile. Sympathizing with Russians, for example, is taboo, says Lyutova. “When I write about Russians in poverty, I really have to watch my tone, otherwise I will get my colleagues on my roof.” For example, at the end of 2022, Dozhd fired a journalist who had shown compassion for Russian soldiers. That dismissal was wrong, Lyutova believes.
Lyutova is not milder about Western reporting on Russia. She is “shocked” by the analyses, for example in The Economist, that the Russian economy is doing well, that Putin has inflation under control. “Nonsense.” She bases this, among other things, on daily telephone calls to her network in Russia. Dozhd editor-in-chief Dzjadko is also critical of Western media. “They don't have enough good contacts. Only Russian journalists understand what really happens there.”
That takes some effort from these journalists from afar. On a weekday morning in the editorial office in Amsterdam, a dozen people in their thirties sit with headphones strapped to their computers, which are arranged screen to screen under a low suspended ceiling. The editorial office has no daylight, but it does have bright studio lights, which makes it quite hot. Yet the most common item of clothing is a hoodie. Smart jackets for the news broadcasts hang on a rack, next to a dressing table with a curling iron and face paint. There are huge coffee cups and large cans of coke on the desks.
The Russian journalists are tired, says editor-in-chief Dzjadko, also in a hoodie, and they feel “lost”. Many of them have lived in three or four countries in the past two years. They miss their family. And then every day news about increasing repression in their home country. Dzjadko naturally feels responsible for his people, he says, but he never sends them home at five o'clock. “At eight o'clock perhaps. If you want to be successful, you have to work a lot and hard.” TV Rain produces a news program three times a day, but during major events they broadcast all day long.
TV Rain's journalists are primarily driven by their dislike of Putin. Editor-in-chief Dzjadko, who is naturally soft-spoken, becomes fierce when asked about his journalistic position. “If your country starts a terrible war, you cannot remain neutral, then all principles of objectivity go overboard. If you say you are objective, you are lying to your audience.”
That audience, which provides anonymous but eager commentary on the broadcasts, is what TV Rain does it for, says Dzjadko. “Tens of millions of people in Russia are against the war in Ukraine. We bring the war and the truth to Russia. It is very important what we do.” But it has its price. The emigrated journalists cannot return to Russia without risking years in prison. Five years, or eight, who knows.
Journalist and presenter Polina Milushkova (30) loves Amsterdam. “The fact that you can get to the sea in twenty minutes by train feels like an enormous luxury.” But she's here to work. In her spare time she mainly spends her time on her phone. And journalistically, she feels trapped. She points to the suspended ceiling. “You can't go out on the street.”
She does manage to use the internet to create stories within her field of expertise: women's rights and LGBTI. She recently made an item about a girl who was imprisoned for fifteen days because she wore earrings in the shape of rainbow-colored frogs. And about Wagner's former soldiers, who went from prison to the front and continued raping women after the war.
Now Milushkova is slumped behind her desk with messy hair, but tonight she will sit a few meters away in make-up in the evening broadcast with an item about the Oscars. Sounds like intellectual entertainment. But Milushkova will show which fragments of the Oscar broadcast the Russian state channels cut out. The first Oscar ever for a Ukrainian film, for a documentary about the Russian siege of Mariupol. And a tribute to Navalnywith his motto: 'Evil wins when good people do nothing.'
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