MOSCOW, Feb 21 (AFP) - A new "patriotic military" television channel called Zvezda (Star) was launched Monday by the defence ministry in Russia, where a recent clampdown on independent media has drawn international criticism.
The channel, aimed at developing "national pride", will broadcast initially in the Moscow region, launching 18 hours of daily programming in May.
"Everybody must know, our powder is dry, we are ready to defend our homeland on all fronts including the ideological," said Alexandre Lebedev, head of the defence ministry's radio and television studios and a director of the new channel, told AFP.
At an official launch ceremony, Zvezda presenter Ivan Kononov said: "Our country is the best in the world, our history is the most heroic and we have our future in our hands."
Some 60 million dollars (46 million euros) will be spent this year to create a network across Russia, Lebedev said, adding that he hopes the channel will broadcast into the ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
The launch of the new military television channel comes amid severe criticism of the Kremlin's clampdown on independent media.
In October last year, Russia and many other former Soviet republics were rated among the world's worst places to be a journalist by the respected media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), based in Paris.
"In Russia, the biased coverage of the tragic hostage crisis in Beslan, in North Ossetia, was a flagrant illustration of the total control exercised by the Kremlin over the national TV stations," RSF said then.
Several days earlier NTV television said it must remain loyal to the Kremlin, becoming one of the last independent TV channels to fall under state control.
NTV, which in the past provided hard-nosed coverage of the war in Chechnya and led a series of high-profile government corruption investigations, was taken over by the state-controlled Gazprom energy giant in 2001.
02/21/2005 17:40 GMT - AFP