According to an official statement, the reason was that the business was no longer viable due to several litigations and corresponding financial constraints.
In 2019, Shuster came back to Ukraine as the anchor of Svoboda slova Savika Shustera on the Ukraina television channel.
A distant uncle, who was vice president of the oil company Shell Canada, intervened with Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin on their behalf.
Shortly after Shuster started to write for French newspaper Libération and the Italian magazine Frigidaire.
Radio Liberty fired him over a perceived conflict of interest during Gazprom's takeover of NTV from Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-MOST in April 2001.
Radio Liberty said that, by continuing with his (Football) program at NTV, Shuster had violated its professional code and policy over conflicts of interests.
[7] Weeks after Gazprom's takeover, Shuster began anchoring NTV's "Hero of the Day" interview show and then "Svoboda Slova" (Freedom of Speech).
[5][8] Allegedly Shuster's and his employer NTV's coverage of the Moscow hostage crisis infuriated (then) President Vladimir Putin in 2002.
According to Shuster, this was not the real reason the station closed his talkshow: "the truth was the Kremlin could no longer afford an open, live show".
According to Shuster, at first he had no plans to work in Ukraine but changed his mind shortly after a 2005 visit to a friend, Russian politician Boris Nemtsov, in Kyiv a few months after Ukrainians "Orange Revolution" (Nemtsov was an adviser to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko at the time).
"I decided to go and make some fun of him, I planned to say to him, 'Boris, you finally found a place in politics, but it is in the wrong country.'
[8] "Ukraina" saw a sudden boost in popularity ratings after the start of Shuster's political talk show in September 2008.
[8] In a 2008 interview with Novaya Gazeta Shuster said he would be interested in hosting debates between presidential contenders in Russia.
When I had the live air on NTV, United Russia tried to boycott it realizing their public competitiveness is not high and actually they don't have many arguments.