Echo of Moscow

• 1. Introduction

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  Echo of Moscow was a 24/7 commercial radio station based in Moscow, and for three decades it was one of the most unusual media organizations anywhere in Russia. It carried news and talk shows, it broadcast across dozens of Russian cities and into former Soviet republics, and it did something almost no other Russian outlet dared to do: it put opposing viewpoints on the same airwaves.

  The station survived a KGB sabotage attempt. It survived a violent attack on its staff. It survived owning by a state-connected energy giant while insisting it remained editorially free. Then, in a single day in March 2022, it did not survive the Russian government's response to the invasion of Ukraine.

  How did a commercial radio station hold its ground for so long inside one of the world's most controlled media environments? Who kept it alive, and at what cost? And what happened to the voices who built it once the transmitters went dark?

• 2. Born in the Coup

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  Echo of Moscow's defining test came very early. During the 1991 Soviet coup attempt, the station was one of the few news outlets that openly spoke against the State Committee on the State of Emergency. That made it a target. The committee issued decree number 3, ordering a suspension of Echo's broadcast.

  The station's journalists eventually came to treat that decree as something close to a badge of honor. According to editor-in-chief Alexei Venediktov, the KGB's special Alpha Group made several attempts to physically cut off the radio's access to its transmitter. The staff refused to go dark. Employees connected the studio directly to the transmitter through a telephone line and kept broadcasting.

  From its very first day, the station operated according to one declared rule: all significant points of view about events should be presented. That commitment shaped everything that followed, including the nickname journalists gave the place with a wink. They called it "Ear of Moscow", a pun on its actual name.

• 3. Gazprom at the Table

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  By 2018, Echo of Moscow was majority owned by Gazprom-Media, the media arm of Russia's state-linked energy company, which held 66% of the station's shares. Alexei Venediktov, who had served as editor-in-chief since 1998, was the largest minority shareholder with 18%. The remaining 16% was divided among other minority shareholders.

  In 2008, Venediktov was asked repeatedly whether that majority ownership shaped what the station covered. His answer was consistent: Gazprom and the other shareholders were bound by Echo's own charter, which gave the editor-in-chief the final word on editorial decisions. Venediktov acknowledged that shareholders, Gazprom included, sometimes tried to influence specific stories in line with their business interests. He said they had never moved to actively intervene.

  He also described a practical arrangement the station had settled into: Echo would air Gazprom press statements when the company requested it, and would always ask Gazprom for comment before broadcasting anything critical of the company. It was a negotiated peace, not an unconditional one. On the 1st of November 2014, the tension with regulators surfaced publicly when Roskomnadzor issued an official warning that a program Echo had aired about Ukraine contained what the regulator called "information justifying war crimes". Under Russian law, two such warnings within a single year could result in closure.

• 4. Voices on the Air

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  The station's on-air roster read like a catalog of Russia's most outspoken journalists and commentators. Viktor Shenderovich, Yulia Latynina, Sergey Parkhomenko, Alexander Nevzorov, Yevgenia Albats, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Yevgeny Yasin, and Sophie Shevardnadze all broadcast on Echo at various points. Yulia Latynina was named the station's most popular presenter.

  Most of Echo's programming focused on news and talk formats centered on social and political issues. The station's stated aim was to represent different points of view, which in Russia's media landscape made it conspicuous by design.

  In October 2017, that visibility came with a violent cost. An assailant broke into the station, pepper-sprayed a security guard, and stabbed Tatyana Felgengauer, one of Echo's main presenters, in the neck. Her injuries were life-threatening. She recovered fully thanks to timely medical intervention. The station described the attacker as an Israeli, citing what it called "informed sources". A court-ordered forensic examination determined he had paranoid schizophrenia, and he was sentenced to compulsory medical treatment.

• 5. The Last Broadcast

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  On the 1st of March 2022, the office of Russia's Prosecutor-General asked Roskomnadzor to restrict access to Echo of Moscow, along with TV Rain, citing their coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. The Prosecutor-General's office alleged the stations were spreading "deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel" and material calling for "extremist activity" and "violence". Later that same day, Echo was taken off the air, the first time this had happened since 1991.

  The following morning, Venediktov reported that YouTube had blocked the station's channel, its only remaining broadcasting avenue in Europe, because the station was affiliated with Gazprom. That block was reversed by the 3rd of March. On that same day, the board of directors voted to close the station permanently. Echo's radio frequency was subsequently handed to the state-run Radio Sputnik.

  In September 2022, a number of former Echo employees launched a new internet media outlet, headed by Echo's former deputy editor-in-chief. Then in October 2022, Echo itself resumed online programming from Berlin, Germany, broadcasting through its Echo app.

• 6. What Came After

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  Venediktov and most of the staff did not simply stop. They launched a spin-off YouTube channel called Zhivoi Gvozd', which translates as "Live Nail." The name is a rhyming pun in Russian on the common phrase "Live Guest." The channel carried forward Echo's format and schedule.

  In 2024, a documentary was made about the final days of Echo of Moscow, Novaya Gazeta, and TV Rain, using real-time video of how each outlet's staff dealt with the government's suppression of press freedom. The station that had once been ordered off the air by a KGB decree in 1991, and survived by routing its signal through a telephone line, became the subject of documentary filmmaking itself.