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- Published: March 5, 2022 13:14
New Delhi: Russian news channel TV Rain (Dozhd) declared ‘No To War’ in its final telecast after being ordered to shut down due to coverage of Ukraine’s invasion by Russia.
Apart from declaring its stand against the war in its last telecast, the entire staff of the news channel also resigned on live TV.
The Russian authorities have reportedly suspended the operations of one of the independent media outlets in the country for taking an anti-war stand while covering the Ukraine crisis.
While taking a stand for peace and resigning along with his co-coworkers, Natalia Sindeyeva, one of the channel’s founders said, “No to war” as the staff walked out of the studio one after other.
Meanwhile TVRain, the last independent media outlet operating in Russia, has shut down — here’s the last few minutes of its broadcast, poorly Google Translated. It then cut to Swan Lake, which has particular relevance: https://t.co/XXtUHroZkt pic.twitter.com/Iq7HSal7FW
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 3, 2022
Afterward, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ was played on the channel reminding of the frightening part in history when the Soviet TV stations had to telecast Ballet instead of the civil unrest in the country.
The video of this mass resignation of the Russian TV channel’s employees is now going viral on multiple social media platforms.
According to The New York Times, “Russia’s telecommunications regulator had already blocked TV Rain earlier in the week. Some of the station’s employees have fled the country out of fear for their own safety”.
TV Rain goes out with a bang, broadcasting the Swan Lake performance that aired on Soviet TVs in 1991 during the attempted coup against Gorbachev. At a time when many wonder if those around Putin could stop this war in Ukraine and Russia’s plunge into isolation. https://t.co/ADFGVwxy8o
— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) March 3, 2022
“We need strength to … understand how we can work from here. We really hope that we will return to broadcasting and continue our work,” said Sindeeva in a statement on the channel’s website.
Meanwhile, as per a news report by Reuters, “The channel also announced Thursday that it would stop operating indefinitely under intense pressure from the Kremlin”.