From the first hours of the assault on February 24, Ekho Moskvy (“Echo of Moscow” in Russian) told his six million listeners that Vladimir Putin had made “a political error”.

A few days later, she broadcast a live interview with a senior American diplomat, Victoria Nuland.

One of his high-placed sources told him that he had "pushed the last nail" into the coffin of the radio, Alexei Venediktov told AFP, in a small trendy restaurant in the center of Moscow.

Ekho Moskvy, where this history teacher worked from its creation in August 1990, in the turmoil of the last months of the Soviet Union, was banned from broadcasting on March 1 and dissolved by its board of directors, de facto controlled by state gas giant Gazprom.

As a symbol, the frequency hitherto devolved to Ekho Moskvy is recovered by the state radio Sputnik.

On Friday, the journalist was added to the list of "foreign agents" by Russian justice, a measure that "does not change anything" in his decision to stay in Russia, he says.

"Nothing could save us: the propaganda (of the Kremlin) must be total during operations of this kind", analyzes Alexei Venediktov, 66, easily recognizable by his beard and his shaggy white hair.

The studios of the independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy before its dissolution, on March 3, 2022 in Moscow - AFP/Archives

Russia's last independent media have been shut down, suspended or scuttled in the face of tougher repression, including prison sentences for disseminating information "discrediting" the military.

1983

Many journalists have left Russia.

Not Mr. Venediktov.

"To be credible, a journalist must be under the same pressure as his listeners, walk the same streets as them," says this radio veteran, who has relaunched himself on YouTube and has half a million viewers. subscribers.

Alexei Venediktov in his office of the "Echo of Moscow" radio station, March 3, 2022 in Moscow - AFP

Online, with his guests, he sifts through the action of Russian power in Ukraine and wonders, for example, about the relative silence of the Kremlin after the sinking of the cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea in mid-April.

His positions earned him at the end of March to discover a pig's head in front of his door and an anti-Semitic inscription in German.

He will not "change" for all that.

He is addressing "these 14 million" compatriots who say they are opposed to the intervention in Ukraine in the polls to "explain to them why it happened, and why it hurts (them)".

Today, he considers that history is repeating itself, comparing the current situation to that of the years which preceded perestroika under the USSR.

"We are exactly in 1983 (...) with the war in Afghanistan (invaded by the USSR), dissidents in prison or expelled from the country and the head of the KGB (Yuri) Andropov in the Kremlin", he lists .

And in a few years, "there will come a (Mikhail) Gorbachev...", he adds with a knowing smile, in reference to the Soviet leader who liberalized the USSR, bringing about the downfall of the entire system.

Already before Ukraine, Ekho Moskvy, "free radio for free people" according to its slogan, had been on the razor's edge several times.

But until then, "Putin said + let them work +", says Mr. Venediktov who often invokes his high-placed sources, including Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, whom he jokingly calls his "drinking friends".

Middle of the chapter

25 years ago, "before his election", Mr. Putin and the journalist used familiar terms, remembers Mr. Venediktov.

And a few times since he came to power in 2000, they have seen each other.

"I told him one-on-one that the absence of any form of competition in the country was the main problem: political, ideological, economic absolutism...", he says.

Alexei Venediktov, former head of the liberal Russian radio "Echo of Moscow", April 20, 2022 in Moscow Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP

“I was also the only editor facing Putin to criticize the unnecessary arrest of (main opponent Alexei) Navalny” in January 2021, five months after a poisoning which almost killed him.

But "for Putin, the media are an instrument (...), we have never spoken the same language", summarizes Mr. Venediktov.

Nevertheless, the Head of State has twice asked him for his opinion on the place he will occupy in history textbooks, according to the journalist: once in 2008, after his first two terms, then in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea by Moscow.

Today, comments Mr. Venediktov, who taught history for 20 years, "we are in the middle of the chapter and the page is not yet turned".

© 2022 AFP