ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Before his death a little over a year ago in a Russian gulag, anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny reached millions of people through his YouTube channel. The Russian opposition leader moved to YouTube after he was banned from traditional TV, which the Kremlin controls. Now, thanks in part to Navalny's widow, Russians will again be able to watch the Navalny team's videos, interviews and messages on TV - this time via satellite. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: A new channel will begin broadcasting across Russia today. It's called Rossiya Budushchego (ph), or Russia's Future, and its content will be provided by the late Alexei Navalny's organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
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YULIA NAVALNAYA: Hello.
BEARDSLEY: Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, came to the headquarters of Reporters Without Borders in Paris for the launch. The press advocate is a partner in this joint venture. Navalnaya says getting their message out has been increasingly difficult since the war in Ukraine prompted the shuttering of independent media and draconian censorship.
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NAVALNAYA: We are trying to do all our best from YouTube, but still there are a lot of problems in YouTube, and it could be blocked every morning.
BEARDSLEY: Not anymore - now Russians will be able to watch the foundation's latest anti-corruption videos on regular TV, where most people get their news. The channel will be beamed on a HOTBIRD satellite run by the French company Eutelsat. It covers a huge swath of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Russia's Future will be the 13th channel in a bouquet of free, independent Russian language programming called Svoboda - or Freedom - Satellite. Jim Phillipoff is the project director.
JIM PHILLIPOFF: So this project, we think, is a very important step because it brings the Navalny group's great content, which is incredibly popular, to the Russian-speaking broadcast audience.
BEARDSLEY: Best of all, he says, the Kremlin won't be able to shut it down.
PHILLIPOFF: It's not so simple to block satellite in general and ours in particular. I can't go into details, but it hasn't been done yet.
BEARDSLEY: Ruslan Shaveddinov is editor-in-chief at Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.
RUSLAN SHAVEDDINOV: (Through interpreter) There are millions who don't agree with what's happening in Russia, and millions who are victims of Vladimir Putin's propaganda. And we, the team of Alexei Navalny, are committed to doing everything we can to fight this propaganda and show what's really going on.
BEARDSLEY: Thibaut Bruttin is the director general of Reporters Without Borders. When it comes to press freedom, his outfit ranks Russia 171st out of 180 countries.
THIBAUT BRUTTIN: What we're trying to do is to favor, little by little, this idea that the truth matters, that facts matter. I think the war that's raging in Ukraine is something that is showing the limits of also the Russian propaganda.
BEARDSLEY: Russia's Future hopes to attract new viewers, like those well-off Russians in the suburbs of big cities, who are turned off and tuning out the Kremlin's narrative. Phillipoff again.
PHILLIPOFF: Now, for more than 20 years, the Russian public has been bombarded with anti-Western, anti-Ukrainian, anti-democratic, pro-authoritarian propaganda.
BEARDSLEY: Navalnaya says Alexei would have relished this fight...
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NAVALNAYA: My husband - he was a great man, and I am sure that he would be very happy. Thank you so much.
(APPLAUSE)
BEARDSLEY: ...Especially because Russia's Future is launching on Navalny's birthday. He would have been 49. She says it's important to keep his legacy alive.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF SABINA MACH SONG, "FADE INTO YOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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