Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saker.

My guest today has become used to uncertainty and upheaval.

He's doing his challenging job from a third different location in a single year.

When Russian forces launched an all-out assault on Ukraine a year ago,

Tikon Zyadko was in Moscow, editor-in-chief of the independent television channel

D'odjd, or TV Rain. In truth, he and his colleagues were already under enormous pressure,

having seen their broadcast license revoked and been labeled as foreign agents.

Within a week of Putin's Ukraine invasion, Reyn's Moscow operation was shut down

completely, accused by the authorities of illegal incitement. Zyadko and his colleagues fled from

Russia and within months. They'd established a new base in Riga, Latvia. But by December,

TV Rain was in trouble again. This time the Latvian

authorities accused it of spreading misinformation, unhelpful to Ukraine, and they revoked its license.

Now, Rain is broadcasting on television from a new base in Amsterdam. But is there a significant

audience for such a critical voice in Putin's Russia,

characterized as it is by repression and nationalism? Well, Tikon Zyadko joins me now from Riga. Welcome to

Hard Talk. Thank you so much for having me here. It's a great pleasure to have you on this show.

Now, it strikes me this past year

has been one of extraordinary challenge and disruption for you at TV reign. The reason, I guess,

is simple. Vladimir Putin would like to see you cease to exist. How close has it come for you?

Well, we can say that last March, we were out of air for four months

because at the beginning of March we were forced to leave the country and stopped operating. But then,

in July, we decided to relaunch TV station here in Riga and also

...