Jammed broadcasts to blocked website: BBC Russian's 80 years of defiance

For half a century, BBC Russian had to fend off jammers. Now its website is blocked, but millions still read it.

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For the past 80 years BBC Russian has sought to bypass those restrictions, which for decades featured jamming of its short-wave radio broadcasts and now involve blocking its website.

The latest restrictions in Russia have included widespread mobile internet outages and a reported plan to block the Telegram news and messaging app.

On 24 March 1946, the BBC started its first regular radio broadcast in the Russian language aiming at giving listeners behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union an alternative to state propaganda and a tightly controlled cultural scene.

By 1949, jamming of the signal was already the norm.