Index on Censorship reports that a broad range of Russian political parties are calling for an end to censorship of the states TV and radio.

Launched on 16 June, the new committee says that the Kremlin is effectively censoring Russian national TV and radio by excluding them from debates. The broad coalition of political parties and civic organizations range from the unregistered National Bolshevik Party, whose symbol is a hammer-and-sickle variation of the Nazi swastika to the pro-Western liberal political intelligentsia, such as Grigorii Yavlinskii. “The Communists, the Motherland party, the Party of Pensioners have joined; the Motherland party’s youth wing, the (National Bolshevik) Limonovites, the Union of Rightist Forces, and Khakamada’s Our Choice, in addition to a lot of human rights organisations, the Union of Journalists - all of these groups have joined,” Yavlinskii’s press secretary Yevgeniya Dillendorf told RFE/RL.

The Russian Committee on Defending Freedom of Expression is calling on President Vladimir Putin to restore open political debates and live programmes to the Federation’s state broadcast networks.

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