Czech Republic to rescue Radio Free Europe after Donald Trump funding cuts

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The Czech government has pledged to step in and support Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty after US President Donald Trump’s administration cut funding to the broadcaster, which has been countering the propaganda of autocratic regimes such as Russia and Iran.

The Prague-based media outlet is reliant on US federal grants and was initially set up to communicate beyond the iron curtain during the cold war. The funding cuts were part of an effort by Trump to curtail foreign aid, and to shut down Voice of America, a federal broadcaster launched during the second world war.

‘‘We will do everything that we can to give them the chance to continue in this very important role,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told the Financial Times, adding that he had listened to Radio Free Europe in his youth. ‘‘I know what it meant for me in Communist times.”

Fiala called for “a coalition of states for a European solution”. He said he felt “very proud” to host RFE/RL and hoped it would stay in Prague, where it has been based since 1995.

The Czech government has enlisted seven other EU countries to help find fresh funding for RFE/RL and foreign minister Jan Lipavský even suggested a European takeover: “If we see value in it, then it makes sense to consider ways to secure its future, including the possibility of buying it.”

The media group says its staff of 1,700 still has a weekly audience of 47mn, across 23 countries and in 27 languages.

Elon Musk, who is driving Trump’s efforts to cut public administration, has called for RFE/RL’s shutdown, dismissing it as “radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1bn/year of US taxpayer money”. 

The broadcaster is hoping it can overturn the aid cuts in court. On Tuesday it sued the US Agency for Global Media for violating the US constitution by ending grants that covered its $142mn annual budget. “We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our demise by despots around the world is premature,” said chief executive Stephen Capus.

The director of RFE/RL’s Russian language-TV channel, Pavel Butorin, said Trump’s cut was “a shock” that left Russian officials “popping the champagne”. He said that he still hoped the US Congress would revert the order. Historically, “some of our strongest supporters came from the Republican side, so I hope they speak out”, he said. 

Butorin has a painful personal experience of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s media crackdown after his wife was arrested when she visited her family in Russia in 2023. Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for RFE/RL, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for alleged crimes that included spreading false information about Russian troops in Ukraine.

She was released as part of a US-Russian prisoner swap in August last year after being kept in what her husband called “dehumanising conditions, sleeping and eating 3 feet from a hole in the ground that served as a toilet”.

Daisy Sindelar, a former editor-in-chief of RFE/RL, said the “heartening” support from Prague and some other European governments showed they “understand the importance” of the broadcaster’s work. “The war in Ukraine is not a distant reality but something that is happening on their border,” she said.

Butorin said that the funding troubles could put the right to stay in the EU at risk for many employees who have residency permits linked to their job. Half of the 160 staff of his TV channel are Russian.

“Our journalists care about their countries, they don’t see themselves as representatives of America,” he said.