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Thursday, November 08, 2007

Georgia cuts off Voice of Russia transmissions


November 8th, 2007 - 16:28 UTC by Andy
Text of report in English by Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 8 November: Georgia has stopped airing Russia’s state-run international radio broadcasting service Voice of Russia during the state of emergency, an aide of the radio company’s chairman, Yekaterina Yagunova, told ITAR-TASS on Thursday [8 November].

“We’ve received such information from our Georgian partners. They say Voice of Russia will stop broadcasting its programmes from midnight till the state of emergency in Georgia is lifted,” she said.

She pointed out that the Russian service airs inside Georgia six hours per day - from 10:00 a.m. to 13:00 a.m. and from 19:00 p.m. to 22:00 p.m. [local time].

Russia’s other state-run radio stations - Mayak, Yunost and Radio Rossiya - said their programmes are not aired inside Georgia.

“These stations can be listened to only on satellite radio and its signal cannot be blacked out,” the radio station’s technical specialist said.

Besides, some regions of Georgia can listen to Mayak on medium frequencies thanks to powerful transmitting devices located in the Krasnodar territory.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s TV channel RTR-Planeta also stopped broadcasting, the channel’s press service told ITAR-TASS. “Today without any announcement our transmissions were cut off,” the press service said.

(Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1424 gmt 8 Nov 07 via BBC Monitoring/R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)