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Tikhon Dzyadko, editor in chief of independent Russian TV channel Dozhd, in an office in Riga, Latvia, on Sept. 8.GINTS IVUSKANS/AFP/Getty Images

As Russia moves to intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and the army’s partial mobilization descends into chaos, millions of Russians desperate to find out what’s going on have turned to a news service that’s been banned by the government.

TV Rain’s viewership has soared in recent weeks even though the station was driven out of Moscow shortly after the war started and only recently relaunched in Latvia, where it broadcasts on YouTube.

The channel has 14 million unique viewers in Russia and 22 million overall, according to Tikhon Dzyadko, Rain’s editor-in-chief. That’s up from a few million when Rain resumed operations in Latvia and it is close to the viewership the station had before it was forced to close in Russia last March.

Mr. Dzyadko said Russians have been searching for trusted information about the war especially now that so many men are being conscripted into the army. “We draw the picture of reality for our viewers,” he said in an interview from Riga. “The state TV channel, they are drawing the picture of their propaganda reality. We show them what is really happening.”

Rain has set up a special inbox for viewers to share their stories about the mobilization and the station receives hundreds of e-mails every day, he added. Many e-mails come from Russian men hoping to avoid the draft by either leaving the country or obtaining a medical exemption. Other viewers talk about the disorganization of the mobilization and describe how men unfit for service – including many with disabilities – have been routinely called up for duty.

“What is interesting is that we see that people who are now interested in the mobilization, a lot of them are people who were not interested in the war before,” he added. “Now they understand that the war is a bad thing only because it came into their houses.”

The recent resurgence of TV Rain, or Dozhd in Russian, is just the latest in a series of comebacks for the station.

It launched in 2010 as the brainchild of Natalya Sindeyeva, a Moscow socialite who owned a top-40 radio station, and her husband, Sasha Vinokurov, an investment banker. Ms. Sindeyeva’s dream was to create a media space that celebrated youth, diversity and inclusion, and she dubbed Rain “The Optimism Channel.”

After a shaky start, Rain reporters soon started covering stories that state media largely ignored, including protests against Mr. Putin and speeches by opposition figures such as Alexey Navalny. Rain could never match the viewership of state television, but it found a critical niche as the country’s largest independent broadcaster.

The station nearly went under in 2014 after it caused outrage in the Kremlin by airing a debate about the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War and questioning whether the city should have surrendered to the Germans to save lives. Within days of the broadcast, Rain was pulled from almost every cable and satellite service in Russia. “They were looking for some excuse and now it seems we have given them one,” Ms. Sindeyeva said in a documentary Tango with Putin.

Ms. Sindeyeva regrouped and switched to a subscription model. To save money, she operated the channel out of her apartment before finally relocating Rain to a former perfume factory.

But pressure from the government continued, and by the time Russia invaded Ukraine last February, most independent media services had been labelled “foreign agents.” In March, Rain and many others were forced to close or face up to 15 years in prison for violating laws prohibiting the dissemination of false information about the war.

Russia has banned nearly 17,000 websites, including Facebook, Twitter and most foreign news sites, since the war started, according to Top10VPN.com, a London-based research company. But it has not blocked YouTube although some content has been restricted.

Mr. Dzyadko and his wife, Ekaterina Kotrikadze, who was an anchor at Rain, headed to Georgia and began broadcasting a news program on YouTube. They eventually relocated to Riga to help relaunch Rain in July. The channel also has a studio in Amsterdam and there are plans to expand to France and the United States.

Rain isn’t the only news organization to restart outside Russia. Latvia is also home to Novaya Gazeta Europe, a spinoff of Novaya Gazeta that was once Russia’s leading investigative newspaper. Its editor, Dmitry Muratov, was the co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Other Russian news sites – Mediazona, Verstka, Important Stories and Moscow Times – also operate out of various European cities and feed stories back home.

Rain now has around 60 staff, down from 200 during its heyday. It’s funded mainly through donations and recently launched a GoFundMe campaign. Some additional revenue comes from cable TV carriers and by sharing ad revenue with YouTube.

Plenty of challenges remain. Sanctions against Russia mean that YouTube won’t allow monetizations from Russian views. That has left Rain earning nothing from its largest audience.

Finding journalists to report news in Russia is also difficult given the government’s crackdown on media. And covering the war in Ukraine is a challenge because it’s almost impossible for Rain reporters carrying Russian passports to enter the country.

But Mr. Dzyadko remains optimistic about Rain’s future and the growing demand among Russians for real news. “Everyone has a sense that the situation is very much unstable for Putin,” he said. “It’s obvious because he made a lot of mistakes, but no one knows where it will go and where it will end.”

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