‘We can’t live with people who support Putin’s war’: the TV chief who fled Russia

When journalists faced jail for reporting on Ukraine, Viktor Muchnik closed down his Siberian TV station and left for Armenia

On the ninth day of Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, editor-in-chief Viktor Muchnik gathered the staff of TV2 for a meeting at their small newsroom in the Siberian city of Tomsk.

New wartime laws meant the whole newsroom risked jailtime for reporting on the conflict, Muchnik told them, and TV2 had just been officially blocked by Russia's communications watchdog, along with many other independent media outlets.