One of Russia’s last independent television stations, TV Rain, took a stance against the county’s invasion of Ukraine before being shuttered under heavy pressure from the Kremlin.
The New York Times reports that, during TV Rain’s last broadcast Thursday, it played Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in a nod to Russian history rather than displaying images of war.
Incidentally, Vera Krichevskaya, film-maker and co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s only surviving independent TV station, was on her way to Moscova from Helsinki to inaugurate a fast paced documentary on the tv channel.
Krichevskaya, 47, flew in from London the previous day, travelling via Helsinki because so many countries had closed their airspace to Russia. She was on the bus to St Petersburg when she got a call from the country’s biggest cinema chain to say they were pulling the film. “They said given the circumstances, they could no longer show it,” she said.
It is presumed that the old lady returned to Finland unharmed.