Radio Lenta on 1557 kHz: anti-war Russian radio from Sitkūnai, Lithuania

What you hear

Radio Lenta is an anti-war station in Russian for listeners in Russia: news that the state channels do not carry, interviews with people who left the country and people who stayed, discussion of the war in Ukraine and its cost at home, and music by Russian-language artists who are no longer played there. The catalogue records the station under two names, Radio Lenta and Nasha Lenta, with Pravda as a third label that has appeared in its announcements, and lists it at about 14:55 to 21:05 UTC on 1557 kHz. The word about matters: the catalogue warns that the schedule changes often, and listeners have found the station starting later, ending earlier or missing a day altogether. Treat the hours as a guide and listen for the identification.

Who transmits and why

The programmes are made in the Netherlands, according to the catalogue, by a team working outside Russia, and sent to the Sitkūnai transmitting centre north of Kaunas in Lithuania, where a 50 kW transmitter puts them on 1557 kHz. Sitkūnai has carried hired broadcasts aimed east for decades, and the same site transmits Radio Signal on 666 kHz for Belarus in the same hours, which has its own entry.

Medium wave is the point of the exercise. Websites can be blocked and apps can be traced, but a car radio in Pskov or Smolensk tuned to 1557 kHz leaves no record and needs no connection. Who funds the station, how large its audience is and how long it will stay on the air are not in the data, and nobody outside the project can say for sure; stations of this kind have appeared and disappeared on the Lithuanian transmitters before.

When and where to listen

Medium wave carries far only after dark, and 50 kW on 1557 kHz, at the upper end of the band where daytime ground-wave range is shortest, needs darkness more than most. By day the signal covers Lithuania and the nearest parts of Latvia and Poland. After sunset it reaches north-western Russia, Belarus, Finland, Sweden, Poland and Germany, and on winter nights much of Europe. The early part of the broadcast is in daylight for most of the year, so the last two or three hours before 21:05 UTC are the best; in December the whole broadcast is dark.

Receivers in Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Poland hear it best. 1557 kHz has a long-standing high-power user in France, and from western and central Europe that station may dominate at night; a receiver in the Baltic region avoids the problem. The program tunes AM; a sideband mode with a narrow filter helps separate the two stations when both are audible.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Medium and long wave → Radio Lenta 1557 kHz (Russian). ShackDeck picks a public receiver that hears 1557 kHz, tunes it and sets AM. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed; choose a receiver in the Baltic states or Finland and expect the hours to drift.