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Canceled Show to Be Revived Online

A political talk show that was taken off Russian MTV last week will reappear on the Snob.ru website founded by billionaire and presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov.

The show "GosDep" — or "State Department" — hosted by Ksenia Sobchak will be broadcast online starting next week, Snob.ru director Nikolai Uskov said Tuesday in a statement on the lifestyle and blogging portal.

MTV has taken the show off the air after its first broadcast on Feb. 7, claiming that politics was uninteresting to its youthful audience. Prokhorov said in the statement that this was "another lie" and suggested that the decision was made because Sobchak had invited Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on for the second episode.

"I promise that [Navalny] will appear," Prokhorov said, adding that he would guarantee freedom of expression if he wins the March 4 election. "Free speech will return to central television, and we will do away with censorship and [expletive] for good," he said.

Sobchak was quoted in the statement as saying she would invite Prokhorov to the show soon.

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