Century-old tech is taking on Putin's propaganda after modern media channels were cut, writes Ben Woods
Away from the front lines in Ukraine, a separate battle is being fought using technology from a bygone era.
With Russians and Ukrainians increasingly cut off from impartial news, the West has turned to a centuryold radio communication. Shortwave radio services are being used to combat Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine, filling the void left by Russia's crackdown on Western broadcasters and social media companies.
Despite being threatened with extinction by superior radio frequencies and smartphones, it is enjoying a resurgence due to its resilience to interference - and is proving a vital backstop for maintaining the free flow of information. Its recent successes have resurfaced an argument as to whether the West has been too quick to wind down the radio frequency.
BBC World Service's current affairs shows such as Newshour, World Business Report and Sports World are being beamed into Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and parts of Russia for four hours a day to aid Ukraine's fight back over the airwaves.
Jamie Angus, the BBC's senior controller for news output and commissioning, says shortwave services are difficult to jam, making them a powerful weapon during conflict. "While it is true that we have been moving away from shortwave strategically over the past couple of decades, it remains a tool in our arsenal when there is a crisis," he adds.
"It is not the first time we have used it. We turned to it in Kashmir a couple of years ago when there were heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, and all the internet and phone lines were switched off in the region. There was a very strong culture of shortwave listening during the Cold War in eastern Europe and what was then the USSR. How many of those sets have been retained at the backs of people's lofts, who knows? But we think there are enough out there to make it worth investing resources in to put the signal back on."
The media landscape has certainly evolved since Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi laid the foundations for shortwave radio during the 1920s. Discovered while experimenting with transmissions between a wireless station in Cornwall and his yacht in Beirut, Marconi went on to establish connections between London and Australia, and from India to South Africa, through the British General Post Office.
The BBC began using shortwave in 1932 when broadcasting as the Empire Service. George V described it as broadcasts for English speaking "men and women, so cut offby the snow, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them".
It became a prolific propaganda device. During the Second World War, the BBC launched Radio Londres, a French language service, to counter Adolf Hitler's propaganda campaign in Nazi-occupied France. Yet it was the Cold War when shortwave truly came to prominence. Voice of America, the nation's first state-run station, began daily broadcasts into the Soviet Union in 1947 that prompted the Communist
Party to set up special jamming stations to counter their guerilla tactics. Still, the dominance of FM and digital radio, alongside the meteoric rise of the podcasts apps on smartphones, have made shortwave an endangered species in recent years. The BBC World Service's closed its shortwave servicein America, Australia and Europe since the turn of the millennium.
While only one shortwave transmitting station remains in the UK, at Woofferton in Shropshire, the BBC still reaches around 30m listeners a week in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Simon Spanswick, chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasters, says shortwave's biggest threat comes from the shortage of manufacturers making compatible radios and the burgeoning middle classes in the developing world who want superior services .
However, he believes it will always have a purpose in countries experiencing upheaval from political tensions or natural disasters: "Lifeline radio is very important in countries prone to natural disasters. Shortwave plays a part in providing information when a tsunami takes out the local infrastructure.
"Shortwave is like insurance. It is expensive to maintain and doesn't prove its worth until you need to use it at a time of crisis," says Spanswick.
"But it will continue to have a role for a considerable length of time, especially in Africa where you need to access the far reaches of the country where there is no mobile phone coverage."
Such arguments leave the BBC in financial conundrum: can it justify shortwave's existence for another 50 years given the financial demands of digital information warfare and the growing strain on Auntie's budget?
While the US beams Voice of America (VOA) programmes into the conflict zone, the service is crowdfunded and delivered by a privately run shortwave facility in a Florida cattle ranch.
Shortwaves for Freedom has raised more than $18,331 (-L-13,890) - enough to keep broadcasting into summer - because VOA will not provide the funding. The campaign has now branched out to beam America's Radio Liberty - the Russian service of Radio Free Europe - across the warzone and beyond Putin's borders.
Jeff White, the general manager of Miami Radio International, which is delivering the service, says the company has received many thank you messages from Ukraine and Russian citizens grateful for the programmes.
"We've had responses from listeners in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The day after we started the transmission of Radio Ukraine International, we got a message on our Facebook page saying, 'Thank you from Kharkiv, Ukraine'. We also received many emails from Russia that don't give any political opinions, but simply say we are listening to you," he adds.
"Although we had one message from a Russian, who said, 'Please continue what you are doing. I am totally against Putin's fascist government and we need to get information'."
Ultimately, the BBC's main weapons in the information war still lie with television broadcasts and digital. BBC News Ukraine is providing hour-long news bulletins daily on TV and via YouTube, while BBC News Russia is reaching audiences through journalists based outside the nation using services such as Telegram, the encrypted messaging app.
Such is the importance that ministers are placing on the BBC's efforts that the World Service has been given an extra -L-4.1m for "urgent and unexpected costs" to battle disinformation. Shortwave may struggle to claim a slice of that pie, yet it has proven that even in the interconnected age, a robust backstop is needed when malignant forces threaten to muzzle the voice of the West. (telegraph.co.uk)
