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The Czech government is committed to intervening and supporting Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty after the administration of the American president Donald Trump reduced the financing of the diffuser, which thwarted the propaganda of autocratic regimes such as Russia and Iran.
Prague-based media depends on American federal subsidies and was initially set up to communicate beyond the iron curtain during the Cold War. The financing cuts were part of a Trump effort to reduce foreign aid and to close the voice of America, a federal diffuser launched during the Second World War.
“We will do everything we can to give them the opportunity to continue in this very important role,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told Financial Times, adding that he had listened to the Radio Europe Libre in his youth. ”
Fiala called for “a coalition of states for a European solution”. He said he felt “very proud” to welcome RFE / RL and hoped that he would stay in Prague, where he has been based since 1995.
THE Czech The government has enlisted seven other EU countries to help find new funding for RFE / RL and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský even suggested European control: “If we see value, it is logical to consider the means to secure its future, including the possibility of buying it.”
The media group claims that its 1,700 staff still have a weekly audience of 47 million, in 23 countries and in 27 languages.
Elon Musk, who stimulates Trump’s efforts to reduce public administration, called for the closure of RFE / RL, rejecting it as “radical has left crazy to talk to each other while burning $ 1 billion / year of American taxpayers”.
The broadcaster hopes that he will be able to cancel the assistance cuts in court. On Tuesday, he continued the American agency for the world’s media for violating the American Constitution by ending the subsidies which covered its annual budget of $ 142 million. “We believe that the law is on our side and that the celebration of our disappearance by despots around the world is premature,” said General Manager Stephen Capus.
Russian Russian language channel of RFE / RL, Pavel Butorin, said that the Trump Cup was “a shock” that left Russian officials “emerging champagne”. He said he was still hoping that the US Congress would return to order. Historically, “some of our greatest supporters came from the republican side, so I hope they express themselves,” he said.
Butorini has a painful personal experience of the repression of the Russian president Vladimir Putin after the arrest of his wife when she visited her family in Russia in 2023. Alsu Kurmasheva, who worked for RFE / RL, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for alleged crimes which included the dissemination of false information on Russian troops in Ukraine.
She was released as part of an American Russian exchange of prisoners In August of last year after being kept in what her husband called “the conditions of dehumanizing, slept and eating 3 feet of a hole in the ground which served as toilets”.
Daisy Sindelar, former editor -in -chief of RFE / RL, said that the “encouraging” support from Prague and certain other European governments showed that they “understood the importance” of the work of the diffuser. “The war in Ukraine is not a distant reality but something happening at their border,” she said.
Butorini said that financing problems could put the right to stay in the EU in danger for many employees who have residence permits related to their work. Half of the 160 employees in his television channel are Russian.
“Our journalists care about their country, they do not consider themselves as representatives of America,” he said.
