The Trump administration appears bent on silencing Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, something Moscow tried but failed to achieve and that will only help escalate its repression and crimes in occupied Ukraine
Crimeans have the right to know! Marking the tenth anniversary of the initiation of Crimean Realities in March 2024 Image RFE/RL
Crimeans have the right to know! Marking the tenth anniversary of the initiation of Crimean Realities in March 2024 Image RFE/RL
The current Russian regime pulled out all its weapons to crush Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty [RFE/RL], labelling it a ‘foreign agent’ , an ‘undesirable organization’, as well as persecuting individual journalists. As in Soviet times, ‘Radio Svoboda’ / ‘Radio Liberty’ continued to broadcast, with specific projects, such as Crimean Realities, Donbas Realities and others, providing crucial information about Russia’s political repression and, increasingly, its war crimes in occupied parts of Ukraine. It is immensely frustrating, therefore, that a US administration should have crushed ‘Liberty’ and done so, seemingly, parroting Moscow’s narrative.
On 15 March, staff at Voice of America [VOA] received an email, placing them on paid administrative leave ‘until further notice’. RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus announced that same day that RFE/RL had been informed by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) that its federal grant agreement, which funds RFE/RL’s global operations, had been terminated.
These were the immediate results of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on 14 March 2025, reducing USAGM to its minimum legal functions. In reporting the move, Deutsche Welle noted that USAGM is headed by a Trump ally, Karl Lake and that during his first presidential term, Trump had clashed with VOA and forced two of its directors to resign. The executive order this time was issued a day after a speech in which Trump blasted liberal media, such as CNN and MSNBC, claiming them to be ‘corrupt’ and ‘illegal’.
In his statement, Cahus wrote that “the cancellation of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s grant agreement would be a massive gift to America’s enemies. The Iranian Ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years. Handing our adversaries a win would make them stronger and America weaker.
*We’ve benefitted from strong bipartisan support throughout RFE/RL’s storied history. Without us, the nearly 50 million people in closed societies who depend on us for accurate news and information each week won’t have access to the truth about America and the world.*”
This is, indeed, a massive gift to the Kremlin, and a catastrophic blow to those defending democracy and human rights in Ukraine and especially those parts currently occupied by Russia. Perhaps the most powerful comment was given by Stanislav Aseyev, Ukrainian journalist and writer, who spent two and a half years imprisoned in the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’, including ten months of torture in the Izolyatsia secret prison in occupied Donetsk. He wrote:
“I once received an electric shock during torture only for writing for Radio Liberty: I was told that it was "a CIA structure and an enemy of Russia", and for that reason alone I was already guilty.
Now, the "enemy of Russia" is being destroyed by America itself, and my torture seems doubly in vain.”
It is likely that RFE/RL’s Crimean Realities freelance journalist and political prisoner Vladyslav Yesypenko heard similar ‘justification’ for the savage torture that he endured in occupied Crimea back in March 2021. He was seized by the FSB while on a journalist assignment and initially tortured, like Aseyev, into ‘giving an interview’ in which he said that he had been working for Ukraine’s Security Service. It is telling of the FSB’s methods and impunity that Yesypenko was eventually convicted of other charges, despite the defence having demonstrated, among other things, that the grenade which the FSB claimed to have found in his car did not fit in the compartment it was supposed to have been hidden in.
Yesypenko is one of around 20 Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian journalists / civic journalists whom Russia has imprisoned, with some of them serving up to 19 years in the harshest of Russian penal institutions. They include many Crimean Tatar civic journalists from the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement. Remzi Bekirov; Osman Arifmemetov; Seiran Saliev; Server Mustafayev and many others continued reporting on Russia’s repression in occupied Crimea despite understanding that they were likely to be arrested for their courage and face decades in Russian captivity. Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there was little attempt at pretence, with 25 Crimean Tatar civic journalists and activists seized in one ‘operation’ on 27 March 2019, and Nariman Dzhelyal, Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader, journalist and civic activist openly arrested in September 2021 in revenge for his participation in the Crimea Platform inauguration meeting. If the US administration’s crushing of a last bastion of free information is not stopped, there will be no restraint on Russia’s repression in occupied Crimea.
The repercussions for any Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation are equally catastrophic. There are Ukrainian hostages in occupied Donbas, like Yuri Shapovalov, who are known to have been seized back in 2018 because of their critical comments on Twitter. From the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the invading Russian forces and FSB began abducting and torturing Ukrainians, especially those with a known pro-Ukrainian position or who openly criticised the invasion. The whereabouts of UNIAN journalist Dmytro Khyliuk remain unknown three years after he was seized by the invaders in Kyiv oblast. The same is true of a number of civic journalists seized in occupied Melitopol. They have not been seen since they were undoubtedly tortured’ into making ‘confessions’ for propaganda television, but will almost certainly be subjected to kangaroo court ‘trials’ and long sentences. Such sentences have already been passed against Kherson oblast journalist Serhiy Tsyhipa, IT-specialist Iryna Horobtsova and very many others who were first abducted and held incommunicado for up to two years.
The above are just some of a huge number of victims, with Russia’s repression (on occupied territory and in the Russian Federation itself) only escalating. Some of the ‘stories’, such as Russia’s abduction and torture of 27-year-old journalist Victoria Roshchyna and her death in Russian captivity, were so horrific that they ‘made international headlines’.
Such international attention is extremely fleeting, however. It was Voice of America and RFE/RL whom we knew would not lose interest and would continue providing vital cover. It was RFE/RL which, just as it had in Soviet times, continued broadcasting to those otherwise trapped in Russia’s information blockade.