Tatar-Bashkir Service
Radio Azatliq is the only major international news provider reporting in the Tatar, Bashkir, and Russian languages to audiences in Russia’s multi-ethnic, Muslim-majority Volga-Ural region.
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About the Service
Despite censorship, Radio Azatliq is an entirely digital alternative to Russian state-controlled media, reporting in local languages and reaching audiences in the Volga-Ural region since 1953.
Reporting focuses on human rights, ethnic and religious minority issues, the challenges of official war propaganda, individual freedoms, gender inequality, cases of social unrest in the region.
Radio Azatliq’s regional project Idel.Realii covers public corruption, religious extremism, and environmental issues for the wider Russian-speaking audience.
Multimedia project Eide!Online teaches modern Tatar language online in response to increased Kremlin pressure to limit its use.
The Service produced a special visual project tracking war casualties from Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine.
Radio Azatliq’s new talk show Inside-Out challenges anti-Western and anti-American propaganda.
Reaching Audiences
Media Climate
Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index ranks Russia 162nd out of 180 countries.
In February 2024, RFE/RL was designated an “undesirable organization” by Russian authorities. Russian citizens face up to five years in prison for cooperating with “undesirable” organizations or aiding in their financing within Russia.
Multiple contributors have been labeled as foreign agents. Police in Kazan, Russia searched homes of several freelancers and briefly detained them in August 2022.
Radio Azatliq journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was detained in Russia on false charges in October 2023, while on a visit to care for her elderly, ailing mother. She was released in August 2024 after being wrongfully detained for over nine months.
Latest Updates
RFE/RL Awaits Funds, Continues Court Case
RFE/RL looks forward to receiving the funds that Congress has appropriated to us through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
USAGM Rescinds RFE/RL Grant Termination
On March 26, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was informed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) that the Agency is rescinding its letter terminating RFE/RL’s grant agreement for…
US District Court Halts Attempt to Defund RFE/RL
Today, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted RFE/RL’s request for a temporary restraining order in its lawsuit against the U.S. Agency for…
Service Director
Rim Gilfanov
Rim Gilfanov is the Service Director of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service, known locally as Radio Azatliq. He began reporting for the Service in 1990 as a stringer and later as a broadcaster covering ethnic and religious minority issues. Gilfanov previously wrote for the Kazan newspaper Donya, and has published several books, including “Tatar Diaspora” (Kazan, 1993) and “Tatar Way in Reforming Islam” (Prague, April 2003). He is frequently interviewed by local Tatar media outlets. Gilfanov graduated from Kazan State University in 1991 with a degree in sociology and political science.
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