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For half a century, BBC Russian had to fend off jammers. Now its website is blocked, but millions still read it.
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For the past 80 years BBC Russian has sought to bypass those restrictions, which for decades featured jamming of its short-wave radio broadcasts and now involve blocking its website.
The latest restrictions in Russia have included widespread mobile internet outages and a reported plan to block the Telegram news and messaging app.
On 24 March 1946, the BBC started its first regular radio broadcast in the Russian language aiming at giving listeners behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union an alternative to state propaganda and a tightly controlled cultural scene.
By 1949, jamming of the signal was already the norm.
For almost half the 20th Century, Soviet people had to jump through hoops to listen to foreign broadcasts, and for some it was truly a sport, remembers Natalia Rubinstein, an ex-BBC presenter and former resident of Leningrad, or modern-day St Petersburg.
"We really wanted to know what was being hidden from us," she says.
Rubinstein remembers how people who were fond of cross-country skiing – a very popular pastime in winter in Russia – used to take their radios with them out of town, where there were fewer jammers.
"I still have this picture before my eyes: a person leaning on a tree, with ski poles next to him, listening to the radio somehow nestled on their chest," she recalls.
Jamming of foreign broadcasts was pioneered by Nazi Germany during World War Two, using noise or signals from more powerful transmitters located closer to the listeners.
During the Cold War, the BBC would repeat its 90-minute Russian-language bulletin three times a week, so people could listen at least once.
It was not all news: Soviets could tune in to Western rock music, hear extracts from banned literature and even, for a brief time, take part in quizzes.
"My dad used to listen to the 'enemy voices' at night," reads one post on a forum dedicated to foreign-broadcast listeners.
"He would sit on a three-legged stool, press his forehead against the radio,
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