Kyrgyz president backs Musk’s call to close two major US-funded media outlets

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has supported the call of American billionaire Elon Musk to close the US government-funded media projects Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk - they are both billionaires. They understand perfectly well that money does not fall from the sky. They want to stop the senseless waste of Americans‘ money. And they're doing the right thing. This is the 21st century,” the president said, Caliber.Az reports via Kyrgyz media.

Japarov said that nowadays, any information spreads worldwide in five minutes, pointing to the unnecessity of the Radio Liberty news. "The old days are gone."

On February 9, 2025, tech billionaire Elon Musk called for the shutdown of U.S. government-funded media outlets Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA). Responding to a post by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy Richard Grenell, who criticized these outlets as "state-owned media" filled with "far-left activists," Musk agreed, stating on his social media platform X:

Both RFE/RL and VOA are funded by the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). VOA has been operating for over 80 years, providing news in 49 languages to a weekly audience estimated at more than 362 million people worldwide. RFE/RL reports in 27 languages to 23 countries, reaching more than 47 million people weekly.

By Khagan Isayev