The following Friday, the leaders of Latvian N.G.O.s that had been helping Russian journalists hosted a press conference. More than fifty reporters crowded into an event space on the top floor of a Marriott Hotel. It was a sunny, freezing day in snow-covered Riga, but sweltering inside the glassed-in room. Dzyadko, who is strikingly tall and thin, looked even more pale and gaunt than usual. He had spent the past week on talk shows and panels, trying to defend TV Rain and its staff, with little effect.
Seated beside him was Sabine Sile, the former head of the media-studies department at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. In the spring of last year, she had created a co-working space, with desks, computers, sound-recording studios, and a kitchen, for Russian journalists in exile. She talked about how she’d helped Russian journalists open bank accounts and get cell-phone contracts. She said that some had arrived with one hastily packed bag, that many of them needed to find schools for their kids and psychotherapists for themselves. “And we expect these people, while they are experiencing all of this, while they are also unable to stop work, to be heroes, to continue fighting against the war, and to make no mistakes,” she said. “I propose we see each other as humans. We have common values, and they are the only things that will make it possible for us to survive this war.”
As Sile spoke, the color seemed slowly to return to Dzyadko’s face. Sile had grown so frustrated with Latvian authorities that she was beginning to think TV Rain’s journalists might need to find another country to host them. “Maybe we just don’t have what it takes to keep them safe here,” she said. But, she went on, many of them don’t have enough money to pay bills, let alone buy plane tickets, and moving again would be re-traumatizing for them and their children. “If we have a problem, we cannot push it on someone else,” she said. “We have to solve it in Latvia ourselves.”
TV Rain had settled into a familiar state of uncertainty. The team continued to work, as it had through a multitude of crises back in Russia, broadcasting on YouTube and on its Web site. Korostelev was banned from Latvia. Some of his colleagues feared that they would soon be deported. At the time, people close to the government told me that there was no political will to enable TV Rain staff members to secure more permanent legal status in Latvia. Some of their visas were set to expire in the spring. Dzyadko brushed off these concerns: “That’s still months away! We just need to keep working.”
Three days later, TV Rain learned that it was losing its office and studio space in Riga. By then, Dzyadko was in the Netherlands, meeting with Sauer. Sauer made the case for moving the entire operation to Amsterdam. It was more expensive than Riga, and harder for Russian speakers to navigate, but its residents were also less afraid of Russia, less suspicious of Russians, and proud of its nickname, City of Freedom. The mayor, the Dutch foreign minister, and the state secretary for culture and media had all visited Sauer’s space and listened to him outline his vision for a Russian independent-media community.
On December 22nd, TV Rain was granted a Dutch broadcasting license. Dzyadko received a work visa to the Netherlands. He and Kotrikadze would soon be moving to Amsterdam, along with a number of other TV Rain staffers. It would be their third city since TV Rain left Russia, last March. Kids would change schools again. Family photographs would be propped up on new windowsills. But TV Rain’s journalists would have jobs and electricity and heat. They would keep reminding themselves that they are the lucky ones. ♦
TV Rain’s reporters and producers often improvise studio spaces.
The biggest worry in the newsroom was that Ukrainians would stop speaking to them.
The New Yorker · by Masha Gessen · March 6, 2023