80 years of the BBC Russian Service

8 snips

Mar 28, 2026

Oleg Boldyrev, BBC Russian Service journalist who traced his love of shortwave into a career reporting from London and Moscow. Lesthia Kertopati, BBC Indonesia reporter covering coral restoration led by young female divers. They discuss BBC Russian’s 80-year history, censorship and jamming tactics in Russia. Then the Makassar Strait’s coral decline and grassroots underwater gardening to rebuild reefs.

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ANECDOTE

How A Shortwave Radio Sparked A Career

Oleg Boldyrev discovered BBC Russian at 14 while camping with his parents and a shortwave radio.
He remembers hunting airways and hearing Siav Novgorodsev which hooked him on the service.

INSIGHT

BBC Russian Began As Postwar Geopolitical Broadcast

BBC Russian began officially in March 1946 after sporadic wartime broadcasts and translations like Churchill's speech.
Its start followed Churchill's Fulton Iron Curtain speech, which reframed broadcasting into a sustained service aimed at Soviet audiences.

INSIGHT

Soviet Jamming Was Creative And Strategic

The Soviet state used inventive shortwave jamming from 1948 to disrupt BBC Russian, mixing noise, backward voices and music.
Jamming operators varied sounds and schedules, making reception a hit-or-miss experience for listeners.

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The BBC's Russian service marks its eightieth anniversary this week. In eight decades, it has grown from a short wave radio service to a multimedia operation reaching upwards of 6 million people per week, despite ongoing blocking in Russia. As a 14-year-old boy Oleg Boldyrev discovered BBC Russian on shortwave radio whilst camping with his parents in the woods. He eventually ended up working for the service as a journalist both in London and Moscow. He talks to The Fifth Floor about some of the service's most memorable moments and how the current authorities continue to try to stop their citizens getting access to BBC news.

Indonesia's Makassar Strait is one of the world's busiest shipping routes, with 36,000 ships passing between the islands of Sulawesi and Kalimantan annually. Beneath the surface, the area was once home to thriving corals. But by the early 2000s, the ecosystem was under threat of dying out completely as a result of coral damage caused by ship collisions, anchors and fishing practices. BBC Indonesian's Lesthia Kertopati explains how a group of young, predominantly female divers is setting out to restore the coral.

The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts. Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India. If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.

Presented by Faranak Amidi.

Produced by Caroline Ferguson and Laura Thomas

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)