Paris, July 27 (AFP/APP):In a small studio in Paris, Russian journalist Denis Kataev prepares his evening news show that he hopes will play its part in countering the Kremlin narrative about the invasion of Ukraine.
Kataev works for Russian channel Dozhd (Rain), which for over a decade from its Moscow base was the country’s most prominent independent broadcast media in a scene dominated by voices loyal to President Vladimir Putin.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to the channel being blocked in Russia and forced to suspend operations for over four months. Defiantly, it has now resumed broadcasting from a headquarters in Latvia but also from Amsterdam, Tbilisi and Paris, where Kataev is based.
“I am optimistic,” said Kataev as he prepared to present Dozhd’s flagship evening news show “Here and Now” from an impromptu studio set up in a Paris journalism school.
Kataev, a prominent figure in the Moscow journalism scene before going into exile in the wake of the invasion, will from September have to find a new studio when journalism courses resume at the school.
But he insisted that there was an audience for Dozhd’s broadcasting inside Russia.
“The war in Ukraine is, for me, the end of Russia, the end of our hopes,” he told AFP.
“For me Russia is finished and it’s also a question of my conscience, that is why I left my country.”
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