satellite dishes
At the end of October, in the Latvian city of Jelgava, police detained a man who was installing illegal television and providing access to banned Russian channels in about 100 houses in the Jelgava region. During the searches, TV signal receivers, code cards and other professional equipment were confiscated from him. The man was charged with illegal business activities, he is currently awaiting trial. Sales of satellite and television antennas increased in Latvia in March. Demand mainly increased in the regions around Vilnius, closer to the Belarusian border, because there is still a large percentage of the population of Russian speakers.
The French satellite operator Eutelsat in August turned off the NTV-Mir channel on its HotBird satellite due to EU sanctions. NTV-Mir was the last Russian news channel to broadcast in Europe from a European satellite. At the same time, Eutelsat continues to broadcast Russian state channels to Russia, Ukraine and other territories that are not subject to EU sanctions, for example, African countries.
The human rights organization Reporters Without Borders has appealed the decision of the French broadcasting regulator Arcom, which allowed Eutelsat to continue broadcasting Russian TV via French satellites. The complaint was based on a report by the Denis Diderot Committee on Kremlin propaganda in France, and several MEPs joined the initiative by publishing an open letter to EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. So far, Eutelsat is deaf to these demands – as has been repeatedly written , the French company has been doing business in Russia for a long time and productively, and its Cypriot "daughter" is managed by Nikolai Orlov, the son of the former Russian ambassador to France Alexander Orlov.
The French cameraman Eutelsat has been doing business in Russia for a long time and productively
But even after disconnecting Russian channels from European satellites, you can reconfigure the dish to Russian Express-AM8 and Express-80. Similar instructions can be found on social media and YouTube. Thus, Evgeny Kucher, who was born in the Sumy region of Ukraine, and now lives in Moldova on the border with Romania, has posted at least 15 such video instructions on his channel since the beginning of the war. The rest of his content consists of streams about politics, in which he talks about how Ukraine "bombed the Donbass for eight years." However, in general, such instructions are laid out by ordinary Russian-speaking TV masters, who are often approached by clients for setting up Russian TV.
Setup tips are also available on the forums, for example, Russian-speaking residents of Germany. Satellite dishes are bought on AliExpress or even in "Russian stores" in Germany, and they can also be ordered from truckers from Russia. Some late settlers bring plates from their homeland in their car. Penalties for illegal viewing of TV channels have been introduced only in Latvia. The maximum that a viewer of Russian TV can face is a fine of up to 700 euros.
However, it is difficult to recode a satellite dish yourself, and ordering a master at home is quite troublesome and costly. Much more popular are various applications and set-top boxes with the function of viewing channels on TV via the Internet.
Prefixes
On June 6, the German video service Kartina TV, until recently one of the main repeaters of Russian TV channels in Europe, published a message on its website about the shutdown of the Russian TV channels Rossiya RTR / RTR Planeta, Rossiya 24 / Rossiya 24 and TV Center / TVCi / TVC”. The service called the reason for the adoption by the European Union of the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, according to which the broadcasting of these TV channels was outlawed. Soon, on its forum in the Frequently Asked Questions section, the video service published answers to such customer requests as “Give me back the disabled channels” and “Delete the Ukrainian channels”.
Kartina TV is a set-top box with its own software with pre-installed channels and streaming platforms. There are many such video services – and not all of them are registered in a transparent jurisdiction. We managed to connect to one of these. The list includes almost all Russian news channels: First, Russia 1, NTV, REN TV, etc. The service positions itself as "the official operator of Russian TV abroad" and informs on its website that "it has licenses to display all channels that are part of the Channel One family." The contacts contain phone numbers with the German code, but the company is registered in Cyprus.
Applications of Russian news TV channels are blocked in the Play Market and AppStore, but the Android set-top box allows you to install these files directly, for example, through the file manager. Also, many Russian speakers run Telegram channels in which they share instructions on how to set up Russian channels on their own through a set-top box. In addition, the AppStore and Google Play Market, having removed the official applications of Russian TV channels, left all the rest – and if you enter a corresponding request from any European country, you can find many applications with Russian state channels. Their developers, apparently, have nothing to do with Russia – they make similar services for accessing television in other countries.
The former coordinator of Navalny's headquarters in Kurgan, Alexei Schwartz, who now lives in Germany and continues to cooperate with FBK, believes that Android set-top boxes broadcasting Russian channels are difficult to deal with:
“On any Android device, you can download a third-party application of the same channels, and they will broadcast. You need to be very confused so that the applications stop showing Russian TV. If the official part of the Play Market and the AppStore can do this, then unofficial installation applications on Android will no longer do this. Another thing is that you need to buy a prefix, you need to dig with it, and not everyone will go for this either.
In addition, a scheme called “card sharing” is gaining popularity in Europe, a method by which several independent receivers can access pay-per-view satellite or cable TV channels using one access card. For this, you only need an Internet connection. A firm or individual in Russia buys access to satellite or cable TV and “distributes” this access to other people, including those abroad. A person in a European country buys an ordinary set-top box, goes to the website of a Russian company providing cardsharing services, pays for access (around 3-5 euros per month) and receives a login and password to access Russian TV. The Insider found many sites offering cardsharing services for watching Russian channels. Payment in them is made through Kazakh or Belarusian banks, which are not subject to sanctions.
Social networks
The German-language YouTube channel RT was removed for fakes about mass vaccination deaths in September 2021. At the end of May 2022, a similar fate befell the German channel RT on TikTok. But this was done by the leadership of the platforms themselves, but the German government itself does not restrict the spread of Russian propaganda in any way. Those wishing to watch RT stories can freely go from Germany to the mirror of the old site with stories in German. In Germany, Finland and other countries, the website of Pervy and other Russian news channels is also available for viewing.
The Insider has discovered a whole "family" of German-language Telegram channels and chats spreading pro-Russian propaganda. It is not difficult to determine that they are interconnected – they share links to each other. For example, in one of them daily news releases of RT appear, which are distributed through other channels. In another, announcements and videos of pro-Russian rallies that took place in Germany are fasting. The latter even has a separate chat room for discussing politics, a meme channel, a Putin fan club, and a Free-People website.
Most of these Telegram channels were created before the pandemic. The most popular is Anti-Spiegel with 95,000 subscribers in May 2019. This is the blog of one of the most famous Russian propagandists in Germany, Thomas Röper, who has been living and working in St. Petersburg since the late 90s. The rapper broadcasts not only through Telegram, he has a website, YouTube (more than 100 thousand subscribers), Twitter and Facebook. However, judging by the frequency of updates, Telegram remains the main platform for the propagandist. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pro-Russian blogger actively spread fake news about vaccinations, and with the start of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, he turned into a Z-military officer who travels around the Donbass and talks about the “atrocities” of the “Nazi junta”. The Berlin-based CeMAS Institute lists Anti-Spiegel as one of the most popular "alternative" news sites in German-language channels and Telegram groups devoted to conspiracy theories. At the same time, none of Roper's blogs has yet been blocked.
Despite the fact that Telegram is far from the most popular messenger in Europe, its share has grown significantly during the pandemic, at least in Germany. Now, according to various surveys, it fluctuates between 15 and 18 percent of respondents. This was noted with concern in the plot of the German TV channel ZDF:
“Originally programmed to safely communicate with dissidents in autocratic regimes, Telegram has evolved into a safe haven for extremists: pandemic deniers, right-wing extremists and even criminal organizations can communicate almost unhindered there.”
German authorities say that despite numerous requests to remove extremist content, Telegram simply ignores them. According to Schwartz, the Germans themselves consider Telegram to be a “darknet”, and it is mainly used by people from the CIS countries.
One of the main platforms for propaganda remains the Russian social network VK (formerly VKontakte), which is overseen by the son of the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladimir Kiriyenko. The VK website is blocked in some countries, for example, in Latvia.
Video hosting
For fakes about mass deaths from Western vaccines, the German-language YouTube channel RT DE was deleted in September 2021 (at the end of May 2022, a similar fate befell the German RT channel on TikTok). However, this was done by the leadership of Google, but the German government itself does not restrict the spread of Russian propaganda in any way. Those wishing to watch RT stories can freely go from Germany to the mirror of the old site with stories in German. In Germany, Finland and other countries, the website of Pervy and other Russian news channels are also available for viewing.
YouTube remains an important platform for Russian propagandists. The daily news bulletins of the RT that has been removed from there have been scattered through many small unofficial channels that are harder to trace and remove. Their task is to promote videos to the top, winding up views and comments with the help of bots, so that as many YouTube users as possible see the conditional Solovyov, Alexey Schwartz believes. There are also channels of "unofficial propagandists" of the Kremlin like Yuri Podolyaki and Anatoly Shariy. They are regularly blocked and resurrected under new names, but they are easy for Putin supporters to find thanks to YouTube recommendations. For example, Podolyaki's new channel was created just three weeks ago, but it already has 40,000 subscribers.
RT shows continue to circulate in Europe through video hosting sites Odysée and Rumble, notorious for their lack of moderation. During the pandemic, both services have become a kind of haven for COVID dissidents (the number of visitors to Rumble increased 31 times from 2020 to 2021). Now, both platforms are streaming RT content. And if Odysée eventually agreed to remove the releases of the Russian TV channel (Andre Lange, coordinator of the Committee Denis Diderot, Andre Lange, told The Insider), then the head of Rumble, Canadian entrepreneur Chris Pawlowski, publicly refused to do this, writing on Twitter that he would “disconnect” France from his video hosting. It was the French government that demanded that Rumble block Russian news resources, but the video hosting content is available from any EU country.
Alternative Ways to Deal with Propaganda
Despite the situation with Rumble, André Lange notes that it is much easier to get cooperation from digital platforms than from satellite operators and national broadcast regulators. As an example, he cites the management of Twitter, which recently blocked an account that spread a fake that the grandfather of European Commission President Ursula von den Leyen was a Nazi. (Exactly the same fake, only about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was launched in April by the Rossiya 1 TV channel).
I agree with Lange and Karina Urbanaviciute, project manager of the international independent organization Debunk EU, which is engaged in the study of disinformation and media literacy. Urbanaviciute recalls an initiative by anti-extremism organizations in the United States and Australia that got Facebook to automatically link to Life After Hate organizations when asked for specific words and terms related to violent extremism (such as "Heil Hitler"). and EXIT Australia, offering assistance to people finding a safe way out of extremist groups. According to the researcher, this is the key to success in countering Russian propaganda – not forbidding people to watch, but focusing on how they process information:
“You need to understand that it is simply impossible to block everything. Therefore, it is necessary not only to control the information space, but also to develop media literacy from school, as in Finland, for example. Both methods take a very long time and will give an effect after 5-10 years. As for older people and the impact of propaganda on them, things are still more complicated here. According to research , people believe conspiracy theories because they feel so comfortable. Also, many people are comfortable watching Russian channels because they confirm what they already believe. Something has to happen to make it uncomfortable to stay in this bubble.”