The tango: a ballroom dance from Buenos Aires, distinguished by marked rhythms, postures and abrupt pauses. It’s dramatic, extravagant and ostentatious, also intimate and sexy: it’s a suitable passion for a glamorous Muscovite. But tango-lover Natasha Sindeyeva is not just a dancer; she is the founder and CEO of Russia’s only independent TV channel and the face of journalistic resistance.  Sindeyeva is an exhibitionist, from her vibrant suits to her garish earrings. “Today is all about me, Natasha Sindeyeva,” she announces, giggling, in a clip filmed at a glitzy party in the noughties. “Without any false modesty I’m going to sing and dance. Prepare to get sick of seeing me on stage.”  Not long later, she swapped stage for screen. “Why isn’t there TV for normal people? That’s how it started,” her husband, ex-oligarch Aleksandr Vinokurov explains, although he must have been aware that his wife was far from “normal”. So why? Her co-founder, Vera Krichevskaya, describes Sindeyeva as a “dreamer” with ideas for a fun lifestyle channel with Western-style chat shows. Plus, entrepreneurial innovation was the flavour of the month and independent business was thriving in the relatively liberalised Russia of President Medvedev (he served from 2008 to 2012).  “Natasha knew nothing about TV, how it works or what it’s for,” Vinokurov says. Their budget wasn’t limitless either; the first studio was an old Soviet factory, smelling of “caramel and rats”. And rather than the stalwart professionals that dominated Russian television, Sindeyeva populated her channel with younger, diverse staff and fostered an untraditional, DIY attitude. Everything was buoyed by her enthusiasm and boundless generosity – the champagne flowed freely. Unsurprisingly, on launching in 2010 they became “TV’s biggest joke”, according to Krichevskaya, but their viewers grew steadily. As CEO and a presenter, Sindeyeva was involved in all the big conversations and was the face of the brand. “The optimistic channel”, she dubbed her new project, TV Rain, in a promotional video, as she tangos in pink heels on a rooftop while fake rain comes pouring down on her.  The station couldn’t avoid politics for long. A year after its launch, the Domodedovo International Airport was subject to a suicide bombing which killed 37 people. TV Rain found themselves the only Russian channel covering it live. “Suddenly we found ourselves in a different reality to the one pictured by other TV stations,” Sindeyeva explains. It continued. In 2012, Sindeyeva found herself urging viewers to vote, even though it was the first time she would be voting. In the protests that followed Putin’s re-election, which TV Rain helped expose as rigged, the channel obstinately covered activists and their resistance. Sindeyeva and Vinokurov even attended the protests, chanting with others “Russia without Putin”. “When I found myself on this wave of information, I realised just how much injustice there was around us, which I simply didn’t see before,” Sindeyeva says. TV Rain depicted the fighting in Chechnya and Kyiv and provided platforms for Boris Nemtsov (before his probable murder) and Alexey Navalny (before his arrest). Reporters risked abuse and arrest. “I realised I couldn’t keep not having an opinion.”  Her commitment to showing the truth became unwavering. “On our TV station, nobody can make us do something or not do something – that person doesn’t exist,” Sindeyeva told Vice. She totally dedicated herself to her staff, who determined the editorial policy. In 2013, Putin passed the infamous anti-gay propaganda laws that in effect created second-class citizens. The staff of TV Rain was 50 per cent LGBTQ+. When one of her staff became the first Russian journalist to come out as gay, Sindeyeva applauded. The channel continued to champion LGBTQ+ rights. While President Medvedev had visited TV Rain (albeit in slightly ominous circumstances). Putin’s government waged a “campaign to destroy our TV channel” Sindeyeva told Vice. Two years after his election, Putin took TV Rain off air in January 2014 for its coverage of protests, wiping out its source of income from advertising revenue. It lost 80 per cent of an audience of 15 million. In an interview with the Guardian, Sindeyeva recalls this as a “moment when I wanted to quit everything: the day when our landlord in the Red October district, in the very centre of Moscow, said that we were no longer allowed to work there. But that despair lasted, I guess, for 24 hours or so.” Sindeyeva and Vinokurov lost all their money and moved out of their huge white mansion to “live a simpler life”. “Those decisions weren’t so hard,” she told the Guardian. “Because when we were selling our house, the audience for the channel was growing. We didn’t see it as some sort of a tragedy.” Sindeyeva had invested everything in TV Rain. She didn’t want to let it go. They had some support: activists demonstrated with umbrellas as a symbol of support for TV Rain in Moscow ...