The end of Radio Liberty: What does it mean for Russia?

President Donald Trump’s decision to liquidate the U.S. Agency for Global Media and stop funding Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has had a particularly strong impact on Russian society – not least because of the important role RFE/RL played throughout Soviet/Russian history. If RFE/RL ceases its work, uncensored Russian journalism will lose a valuable institution.

• The Trump administration’s decision to halt federal grant funding to RFE/RL was always going to trigger a reaction in Russia. Those living in the Soviet Union and behind the Iron Curtain were the key target audience when the organization was created in the 1950s at the start of the Cold War. Alongside the BBC Russian Service, RFE/RL formed the basis of a phenomenon that was dubbed “enemy voices” in the Soviet era.
• From the 1960s to the 1980s, these radio stations were the main – and in many cases only – source of uncensored information about the outside world that got through to the Soviet Union. And it wasn’t just international news: Soviet citizens famously first heard of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster from Radio Liberty and the BBC. The Soviet authorities understood the danger posed by these “enemy voices”: Western radio stations were jammed using special equipment and were often targeted by the Soviet press.
• Radio Liberty was also a significant cultural player in Soviet times. Almost every major exiled Russian writer or poet worked for the station: Gaito Gazdanov, Alexander Galich, Sergei Dovlatov, Viktor Nekrasov, Vladimir Voinovich and many more. The outlet played an important role in preserving Russian culture that the authorities had banned, and provided a valuable source of income for émigré writers in the West.
• After the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, the Russian editorial staff at Radio Liberty faced an obvious and long-term crisis. It came to be seen as a cosy “retirement home” for veteran journalists to wind down their careers. That changed in the 2010s, as Russia's own media faced increased censorship, RFE/RL’s work took on renewed meaning and it rejoined the ranks of significant Russian-language independent media media. Like the Soviet authorities before them, the Kremlin also started paying closer attention. Radio Liberty was deemed a “foreign agent” as early as 2020, long before many other media outlets.
• Radio broadcasts have lost their prominence in the internet age, but the Russian language output at Radio Liberty has remained one of the most high-profile independent sources of news and reporting. They conduct high quality investigative journalism and its journalists are among the leading Russian OSINT experts. Its Current Time TV station – co-produced with Voice of America – stands alongside TV Dozhd as the only fully-fledged Russian-language independent/opposition TV broadcasters. In addition, Radio Liberty is one of the few outlets that can produce almost academic-standard shows about Russian culture.
• This illustrious history appears to be coming to an end. According to unverified reports, RFE/RL’s Russian staff have already been told that the media organization is finished and that all employees will be dismissed over the next two weeks.

Why the world should care

If the American authorities had shut down Radio Liberty in 1995, or even 2005, few in Russia would have noticed. But closing RFE/RL now, when the organization is relevant once again and its work is in demand, seems highly short-sighted.