4 Friday March 18 2022 | the timescover story
Sindeeva chaired an editorial
meeting where she officially pulled the
plug on the station and the staff
decided whether to stay or flee the
country. “It wasn’t a united decision to
leave,” she says. “Everyone had to
think about their personal
circumstances. Most people have
family, children etc. Step by step we
tried to help everyone who was
looking for a way to leave. But many
people were left behind. We all try to
talk to each other every day online,
and we try to support each other.”
Sindeeva has a 20-year-old son
and a 13-year-old daughter, and their
whereabouts are not up for discussion.
Her husband, Alexander Vinokurov, a
former banker with whom she set up
Dozhd and from whom she has
recently separated, has stayed behind
in Moscow.
We turn back to the film and to
its fascinating central portrait of‘We closed the station and
Vera Krichevskaya and Natalia Sindeeva, the women
behind the film Tango with Putin, tell Kevin Maher
about the banning of their TV channel, fleeing Russia
and their hopes for winning the information war
Krichevskaya calls “physical threats”.
Sindeeva says that they finally knew
that the show was, literally and
metaphorically, over when Putin’s
draconian media censorship laws
were passed.
“I want to add something about that,
and I haven’t mentioned this in public
before,” Sindeeva says. “We got an
order from the general prosecutor to
erase all our archive on our YouTube
channel. Because even stories we
posted before the existence of the new
law could cause us 15 years of
punishment. We were basically told to
eliminate all of our materials and all of
our archives from social networks and
open sources.” As ordered, they
deleted ten years of content to avoid
prosecution. Sindeeva looks shattered
as she lets it sink in, aware that what
she is describing is an attempt to
eradicate the very existence, even the
intellectual memory, of Dozhd.W
e get as far
as the
second
question
when the
Russian film
director
Vera
Krichevskaya starts to cry. The fearless
investigative journalist’s documentary
F@ck this Job (renamed Tango with
Putin) charts the perilous progress of
the independent Russian news
channel Dozhd and its many clashes
with the Kremlin, often over its
unfiltered coverage of Ukraine. Since
the invasion, however, and the
introduction of Putin’s “fake news”
law (15-year prison sentences for
promoting non-state-sanctioned
narratives about the “special
operation”), Dozhd bosses, employees
and supporters have become targets
of the regime.
The station was closed on March 4,
and a large section of the staff fled the
country for their safety. I’m talking to
Krichevskaya via Zoom from an
undisclosed location “somewhere in
England”. Next to her, on screen, is the
star subject of Tango with Putin, the
chief executive and owner of Dozhd,
Natalia Sindeeva, known as Natasha.
She is in a bedroom somewhere
outside Russia (“I don’t disclose my
location, sorry”).
The pair, close friends
(Krichevskaya is a former Dozhd
producer), couldn’t be more
different. Sindeeva, 50, remains
fuelled by optimism (Dozhd
was launched in 2010
as “The Optimistic Channel”).
Krichevskaya, meanwhile, is
distraught. She hasn’t slept
properly since the war began
— “Even sleeping pills don’t
work” — and on the prospect
of the end to the conflict she
breaks down. “I’m preparing
myself unfortunately for many
years of this,” she says. “Yesterday I
thought of how old I’ll be when I can
ever go back there.. .”
In the film Krichevskaya, 47,
reminds us that Putin’s reworking of
the Russian constitution (he can run
for president twice more) means that
he can stay in power until 2036. “Even
that’s not relevant any more,” she says,
horrified. “Putin will be there now
until the physical end of his life: 2036?
2045? Dates don’t matter now.”
The pair are here to discuss the
movie and its importance as an
account of how Putin’s propaganda
operates. They boast an insider’s take
on the multilayered message-making
of the Russian media machine. On
Marina Ovsyannikova, a state
journalist who stormed a live TV
bulletin on Russia’s Channel One with
a “No War” poster, Sindeeva has
“mixed emotions”. AlthoughMarina Ovsyannikova’s
protest on the state TV
Channel One. Below:
the protester’s video
post explaining why she
broke her silence to
protest against the warMarina
knew what
was going
on [for
years], as
did many
of her
colleagues
Ovsyannikova has become a heroine
to the West, Sindeeva is less emphatic.
“On the one hand it was indeed a
brave and heroic act. But until two
days ago she had been working for
a propaganda machine for many,
many years. And she knew what
was going on, as did many of her
colleagues who are still making
propaganda. And because they all did
nothing for so many years they helped
bring us to this point right now. So,
yes, I have plenty of mixed feelings
about her.”
And what of Ovsyannikova’s
seemingly “light” sentence (a fine of
30,000 roubles — £218)? “We were
initially expecting very strict
punishment,” Sindeeva says.
“But the reaction from Russian
society, not from westerners,
was so huge that the state
was concerned that a strict
punishment might trigger a
wave of protest — she is a
single mother of two
children. That’s why they
decided to punish her so
softly.” Krichevskaya adds,
nonetheless, that the regime
has a long memory. “As always
with the state, that will not be the
end of it.”
Sindeeva and Krichevskaya’s
experience at the sharp end of state
legislation was nonetheless dizzyingly
swift. They were in London promoting
their movie when the invasion began
on February 24. In between two
preview screenings at a Shaftesbury
Avenue cinema Sindeeva managed to
find online a single Moscow-bound
flight, via Istanbul, and flew directly
back into chaos. She says that she
knew, even then, that Dozhd would
have to go. “It was clear from the first
day of the war that they wouldn’t let
us tell the audience what was really
going on in Ukraine,” she says.
Within days they were told that
Dozhd was going to be blocked from
the internet while at the same time
staff at the station were inundated, via
emails, texts and calls, with what