alternative to the official narrative. a few independent russian media outlets who are still operating have been banned from referring to what s going on in ukraine as a war, as an invasion, as an attack. as you mentioned, echo moscow, one of the really prominent independent radio station, was taken off the air at the kremlin s orders and has shut itself down. so that is permanent damage to what s left of the independent ecosystem in this country. another popular radio station splits its time 50/50 between music and the news. one of the anchors went on the air yesterday and said we re going to stop doing the news because we refuse to pass on the lies that the kremlin insists we spread to the russian people. chris? that is extraordinary. peter, feel free to comment on that. but i also want to ask you about sort of what the white house is thinking in terms of the planning on vladimir putin s part. when you re a government and you are going to make a major move,
missiles hitting residential district, snow coverage of russian casualties, but the ongoing protests taking place inside of russia. in fact, yesterday, the last independent radio station, echo moscow, was shut down. the last independent ev station, tv rain, broadcasters final news. this warning, russian block sites like radio free europe, voice of america, and of course, the bbc. all while the russian bbc language, new site alone, reaching 10. 5 million people alone. more than triple its usual average. today, they went even further, blocking access to both facebook, and twitter. the russian dumas, the parliament, made it illegal, and punishable, by 15 years in prison to report anything that the russian government teams to be false information about the war in ukraine. oh, by the way, russia does not call it a war, and neither can the reporters there. they are calling it a special military operation. so, all of the news that you see coming out of russia has to come from the government i
least seven interviews with russian speaking out lets on the independent media spectrum here. echo moscow radio one of them. closed down. another station closed down here tv rain closed down this week. i entr viewed an anchor a few weeks ago. she was telling me how worried they were. they were living under the spectrum of being shut down any minute. that has happened now. what the independent stations trying to do and take off the official air waves and now hoping to pop up on the internet and places of young people i spoke to here said they ll look for the independent out lets on other internet spaces. the way the government has given them previously permission to be. the voices are not silenced and people are not deaf to the message. it s much harder to get to. yeah. the percentage of people actually hear it probably tiny.
some protests and the russian president cracking down on those protests. but how far can he go in terms of russia and russians putting up with some of the things we ve seen? you ve just returned. you re a veteran of being there. you have seen the past crackdowns. a, anything like this? the new york times is out, cnn is not broadcasting there. that s a symptom of the larger issue, the putin crackdown within russia for the russian people. what was your sense, is this different? is putin still fully in command? it is completely under i shouldn t say it the russian media, state-controlled media, are completely under control of the kremlin. and they have just essentially shut down the last remaining independent news organizations, tv and echo moscow. and this happened now overnight, but it s been coming since putin came into office. it is monumental right now, and i was talking with journalist
then changes the contour of the work of diplomats, when it becomes increasingly harder to get information to the russian people? well, our diplomats are very constrained, right now. i don t think our ambassadors air on tv, right now, i don t think he s engage with the russian people, and i don t know why. probably because of other matters has to do. but for others of us, it s very constraining, two major events happened in russia just in the last 24 hours. putin closed down those tv, tv ran, the number one independent tv got forced on the air, off the internet. an echo moscow, the iconic independent, and quasi-independent radio station, multi media organization. millions of listeners. it s been on for probably 20 years. they were just shut down, just in the last 24 hours. by the way, i was on both of