“Rain” may move from Latvia to Nagorno-Karabakh
The TV3 Group company, which rented premises to the foreign agent TV channel Dozhd in Riga, informed Russian television workers that they must move out by January.
Dozhd stopped broadcasting in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on December 8 after a scandal with presenter Alexei Korostylev, who asked viewers to share information about problems in the Russian army in order to thereby help military personnel.
Now the Latvian authorities are considering the issue of canceling the visas of Dozhd employees. The channel's management was demanded to explain what its employees would now do in the country.
“The TV channel was given 13 worker visas. The goal was to provide broadcasting. Now that the license has been revoked, it is necessary to understand whether the purpose of issuing visas has been preserved. This does not mean that journalists will immediately be deprived of documents - a decision will be made when the channel explains itself,” said the head of the Latvian Migration Department, Maira Rose.
The authorities intend to check whether this or that representative of Dozhd threatens the security of the country. Any of them can have their visa revoked immediately, but will still be able to try to get a visa on “humanitarian grounds.”
But it is not exactly. The head of the NATO Strategic Communications Center in Latvia, Janis Sarts, told Latvian Radio 4 that an agent of the Russian special services could have worked in the Dozhd team, “deliberately creating chaos.”
Russian political scientist Sergei Markov drew attention to the fact that a series of stories appeared on Dozhd about businessman Ruben Vardyanyan, who recently renounced Russian citizenship and became prime minister of the unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh).
“TV Rain found a way out of a difficult situation. They kicked me out of Russia. They kicked me out of Europe. And the Rain goes into Ruben Vardanyan’s pocket. He began to massively make news in his interests. And in Ruben Vardanyan’s pocket there was a huge company of journalists and entire editorial offices. I wonder if Rain will now move to Karabakh? Or will Vardanyan pay for Dozhd’s office with his friends in France?” Markov wrote in his TG channel.
Dozhd may move from Latvia to Nagorno-Karabakh.