MOSCOW, February 14 (RAPSI) – TV channel Dozhd (Rain) is not going to sue the cable operators that stopped broadcasting it because the channel wants to maintain long-term relations with them and hopes that the operators will resume its broadcasts, investor Alexander Vinokurov told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Dozhd held a poll in late January asking Russians whether Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) should have been surrendered to the Nazis in World War II to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

The channel later removed the poll and apologized, but several cable operators dropped it nevertheless. Some explained their decision by commercial reasons: they paid Dozhd in order to broadcast its programs.

The poll coincided with the 70th anniversary of the lifting of the Nazi siege of Leningrad. More than 700,000 Soviet citizens died in the blockade between September 1941 and January 1944.

After several operators had dropped the channel, Dozhd proposed that they broadcast its programs free of charge until the end of 2014.

The Consumer Rights Protection Society filed several lawsuits against the cable networks that excluded the channel from their paid packages. To date, lawsuits have been filed against Continent TV (Orion Express), Telekarta TV, Rostelecom, Tricolor TV (National Satellite Company), NTV-Plus, AKADO-Stolitsa and Beeline (VimpelCom).

The consumer protection society claimed that these companies have violated the legislation on consumer protection and demanded that they resume broadcasting the channel.

Dozhd is still broadcasting on its website, charging an annual subscription fee of 1,000 rubles ($28.70).