There Goes The Rain

Latvia revoking TV Rain's license is a massive blow to anti-Putin Russians. Maybe that's the point.

I was going to say that this is an unbelievably short-sighted, counterproductive decision that serves no purpose except to give Vladmir Putin a propaganda win and to further demoralize Russian exiles trying to take him down.

Then I remembered that Latvia and its Baltic neighbors are still traumatized by a half-century of occupation, annexation and oppression by the Soviet Union (read: Russia) which didn’t end until after Nevermind was released. The wounds never fully healed, and they were ripped open when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. Throw in the presence of a large Russian minority population - a legacy of the Soviet era - long targeted by anti-Western propaganda the motherland, and you can understand why Latvia’s media regulator would distrust even a “dissident” Russian media outlet.

Then I mused on it further and thought, nope, it’s still an unbelievably short-sighted, counterproductive decision that serves no purpose except to give Vladmir Putin a propaganda win and to further demoralize Russian exiles trying to take him down.