Dear Natalia Sindeeva,
Mayor,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Colleagues,

In the spring of 2009, I was fortunate enough to spend a few weeks working in the Moscow office of Axel Springer Russia.
After a few days there, I noticed that a German business colleague never worked in daylight. He always lowered the window shade.
“Isn’t it a little dark for you?”, I asked him at some point.
His answer: “Yes, but a sniper could come.”
“Why would a sniper come for you?”
“Not for me,” he answered, “but from the building across the street – I am sitting between the window and our Chechnya expert.”
The shade remained down.
Axel Springer Russia has not existed since 2015. With a heavy heart, Axel Springer had to leave Russia because independent journalism was no longer possible for a German publisher.

And that’s why I’m so pleased to be able to give this laudatory speech for Natalia Sindeeva today, because many of our former Russian colleagues are now working for her. They work for you because your Dozhd TV enables real journalism.

Natalia Sindeeva founded Dozhd TV seven years ago along with her husband, Alexander Vinokurov. Her broadcast can be described in three words: the other Russia.

The Russia that we hear too seldom here, because of Kremlin propaganda, invasions and bombing. But the other Russia exists. Wild, creative, liberal, intellectual and critical. Dozhd TV is its medium.
It has to defend this unique place within the Russian media landscape every day. After all: It is the only Kremlin-critical station in Russia.

Dozhd TV rumbles not only with the Kremlin itself, but also with its toadies – i.e. that dubious Russian elite that made itself comfortable in Putin’s system and luxurious dachas. Dozhd TV exposes its decadence, bringing many transactions into question – with investigative reportages, features and above all message formats.

Natalia Sindeeva ’s broadcaster was the only broadcaster reporting not only live but also extensively on the mass protests on the streets of Moscow in 2011 and 2012. It sent reporters to Kiev to show the audience what really happened on Majdan. After the assassination of Liberal opposition leader Boris Njemzov, Dozhd TV’s program focused entirely on him and the consequences of that horrific act.

Pussy Riot and Alexei Navalny are passed the mic in the Dozhd TV studio. And those who are not or can not be in Moscow – like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for example – are interviewed by the station in Berlin.

Dozhd TV is the counterweight to the monochrome, interchangeable porridge with which state TV giants clog the airwaves. Dozhd TV sums up the delicate political, economic and social issues – topics that well-endowed, flush state television would not touch.

Natalia Sindeeva and her more than one hundred employees – who earn less for good journalism than pro-government journalists make for bad – give a forum to the last remnants of the Russian opposition. And yet politicians from the government camp also have their say. Both sides are questioned critically; televised discussions cover a wide range of opinions – because Dozhd TV is journalistically independent – something vitally important to CEO and presenter Sindeeva.
The M100 Award honours people who stand up for democracy, freedom of expression and freedom of opinion in a special way.

Natalia Sindeeva does this with a passion and tenacity that humbles many of us who can work in incomparably better conditions.
Your courage is truly humbling.
Dozhd TV is too popular to simply be shut down by the state apparatus. But there are more elegant, subtle ways to build pressure. And you have been defying this pressure for years.
In 2014, cable network operators dropped Dozhd TV from their networks. The station had a good ten million viewers before losing 80 percent of it almost overnight, later even more.
Then the landlord came and kicked the TV studio out of the “Red October” complex in the middle of Moscow. The homeless editing team moved – for a month it broadcast from her personal Moscow apartment! Nevermind the FSB agents down the road.
Their current quarters are an old perfume factory in the north of the city. And no sooner had Dozhd TV arrived than trendy shops, cafés and galleries moved in, too. The other Russia, so to speak.
Giving up was never an option for Natalia Sindeeva.
Not even when the advertisers jumped ship. And it wasn’t just the Russian ones: also – with a few exceptions – the European ones. Unfortunately, cowardice and courage keep close company.
But even then, Sindeeva did not buckle. The economist had long ago shown entrepreneurial courage: In the middle of the financial crisis – and newly pregnant at the time – she and her husband sold their house just to start the station in the first place.
Today, she is doing something that is still difficult for many media companies, even in Germany and Europe: to ask money for news on the Internet. Dozhd TV has over 70,000 online subscribers. Incidentally, one more subscriber as of today – I have just submitted my subscription; maybe I will finally learn proper Russian.
Where does Natalia Sindeeva draw her courage?
Anyone who has ever seen her on the dance floor knows the secret: unbridled energy, an elemental force that flows from this western Russian woman. She is unflappable.

And – this is perhaps the greatest danger for a moralising and misanthropic system: Natalia Sindeeva is not only a fighter by nature, she is also happy. Dozhd TV has a sense of humour. The Optimist Channel, as she calls it.

It takes a lot of optimism to ensure privately funded, independent reporting in today’s Russia. Natalia Sindeeva stands for independent, but above all, indomitable journalism. She embodies the ambition to report the truth in a country with decades of experience and great expertise in fake news. Not just in Russia, but especially in Russia, truth is a very precious commodity.

As a great Russian, Leo Tolstoy, once wrote in his diary: “The truth is like gold.” To see it, all the mud around it has to be washed away.

Dozhd means “rain” in English. The rain that I ran through here in Potsdam this afternoon only soaked me. But your rain, Ms. Sindeeva, is cleansing. It gives Russia journalistic gold.