Germany suspended satellite broadcasting of the Russian German-language news channel Russia Today (RT DE) on Wednesday for lack of a valid license, which provoked anger in Moscow, which threatened reprisals.
Fifteen days after the coming to power of the government of Olaf Scholz, the disputes between Russia and Germany accumulate: reciprocal expulsions of diplomats in connection with a murder case tried in Berlin, warnings issued to Vladimir Putin on the situation in Ukraine, German firmness on the fate of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
On Wednesday, it was the Berlin-Brandenburg Media Authority (MABB) which secured the termination of RT’s satellite broadcasting in German, after protesting with European satellite operator Eutelsat. “No broadcasting license has been requested or granted by the MABB” for this program, justified the German regulator.
RT DE replied that the blockade was “illegal” and the result of political pressure from Berlin. The channel is headquartered in Moscow and has a Serbian license for cable and satellite transmission, which RT says allows it to be broadcast in Germany under EU law.
The German authority considers that the Serbian license is insufficient, because RT DE “is in German and targets the German market”.
” Bad image “
Eutelsat confirmed in a statement to AFP that it had interrupted the channel’s satellite broadcast on Wednesday. “The German media regulator informed Eutelsat that the RT DE channel broadcast on two of our satellites by a third party distributor does not hold a valid license for this broadcast. […] », Explains the operator.
RT, regarded as an international Kremlin propaganda tool, began broadcasting in the German language on December 16.
That same day, YouTube suspended Russia Today’s German account for violating its terms of use, arguing that the media was circumventing a ban imposed a few months earlier by the platform.
Google-owned YouTube criticizes the channel for violating its guidelines for combating disinformation about COVID-19.
However, the German-language Russian news channel can still be viewed on its website.
Speaking on RT on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov did not rule out retaliation for the blocking of satellite broadcasting. “From the start, the German authorities did all they could to give your channel (RT) a bad image in German society,” he complained. “Until recently, we did not want to take the same path, stifling the press… but I cannot rule out that we are reacting,” Lavrov added.
Dialogue
Launched in 2005 as Russia Today, state-funded RT has grown with broadcasters and websites in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, and Arabic.
She has sparked controversy in many countries, notably in the United States, where she had to register as a “foreign agent”, and in Great Britain, where authorities threatened to withdraw her broadcasting license. . The channel has been banned in several countries, including Lithuania and Latvia.
To broadcast in German, the RT channel applied for a license in Luxembourg in June, which the local authorities had refused.
The battle comes a week after a Berlin court sentenced a Russian to life in prison for a 2019 assassination on German soil, and named Moscow as the sponsor of the murder.
Germany is also concerned about the movement of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, the ecologist Annalena Baerbock, supporter of a firmer line of Berlin vis-a-vis Moscow, judged Wednesday that the “dialogue” was from now on essential to defuse a “major crisis” on the Ukrainian file.