Nearly three decades after it helped topple Communist totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is challenging Moscow again, this time with a new 24-hour TV news channel in Russian. The Current Time channel launched this month targets an audience of more than 270 million people, mostly in the former Soviet area, with news and views that provide an alternative to the Kremlin's version of reality as channelled through state-controlled media.