A new satellite TV channel allows Alexei Navalny’s videos to reach Russian audiences

PARIS — Starting Wednesday, Russians will be able to watch a new TV channel featuring political content that was previously banned from Russian airwaves.

The channel, called Russia’s Future, is a joint venture between the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and Reporters Without Borders. The channel is beamed out across Europe, the Middle East and Africa via the Hotbird satellite operated by the French company Eutelsat, and is part of a 13-channel bouquet called Svoboda Satellite. 

Jim Phillipoff, the Svoboda Satellite project director, says 45% of Russians get their news from satellite television. “For more than 20 years, the Russian public has been bombarded with anti-Western, anti-Ukrainian, anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian propaganda,” he says. “So this project, we think, is a very important step because it brings the Navalny group’s great content — which is incredibly popular — to the Russian-speaking broadcast audience.”

Before his death in February 2024 in a Russian gulag, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny mobilized many and angered the Kremlin through his YouTube channel and its meticulous exposés of corruption, garnering tens of millions of views.

He and his associates and their work had been banned from traditional TV in Russia.

Now, thanks in part to the efforts of his widow Yulia Navalnaya, who heads the ACF, Russians will for the first time be able to watch ACF reports and interviews on TV. At a press conference in Paris on Tuesday, along with representatives of Reporters Without Borders, Navalnaya said with the war in Ukraine came the shuttering of independent media and draconian censorship, which made it difficult for ACF to carry out and broadcast their corruption investigations.

“We are trying to do our best working with YouTube,” she said. “There are a lot of problems and it could be blocked every morning.”

Phillipoff said satellites can’t be shut down or jammed.

“It’s not so simple to block satellites in general, and ours in particular,” he said. “I can’t go into details. Let’s just say it hasn’t been done yet.”

Ruslan Shaveddinov, the ACF editor in chief, said the Russia’s Future channel could make a difference.

“Our new TV channel is extremely important in getting Russians true facts and reliable information,” he said. “This has been especially urgent since the war in Ukraine. Truthful information can only be obtained from independent sources, from independent media. We are so misinformed. But through this venture, people may be able to be aware of all the crimes that are being committed and what is really going on.”

Thibaut Bruttin, the director general of Reporters without Borders, said his outfit ranks Russia 171st out of 180 countries in terms of press freedom.

“What we’re trying to do is to favor, little by little, this idea that the truth matters, that facts matter,” he said. “I think the war that’s raging in Ukraine is something that’s showing the limits of Russian propaganda.”

Navalnaya said her late husband would have relished the channel launch coming on June 4, his birthday. He would have been 49.

“He was a great man and this will help keep his legacy alive,” said Navalnaya. “I know he would be very happy about reaching new people with information about the Kremlin, corruption and the war. About everything going on now in Russia.”