Russia announced Wednesday to close the Moscow office of CBC / Radio-Canada and cancel the accreditations and visas of its journalists, in response to the ban on the broadcasting of channels from the Russian group RT in Canada.
It is the first time that Moscow has banned a Western media since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine on February 24. Three weeks earlier, however, Russia had shut down German Deutsche Welle in retaliation for banning pro-Kremlin channel RT from broadcasting in Germany.
“The decision has been taken to take retaliatory measures for Canada’s actions, in this case it is the closure of the correspondent office in Moscow of the CBC radio television, including the cancellation of accreditations and visas for its journalists,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Accusing the government of having “adopted an openly Russophobic (political) course”, she estimated, during her weekly briefing, that “CBC had become a megaphone of anti-Russian propaganda”.
She also denounced Canada’s support for Ukraine, before and since the Russian offensive against its neighbour.
CBC / Radio-Canada announced in early March that it was “temporarily” suspending the work of its journalists in Russia, due to the new law providing for prison sentences for the dissemination of “false information about the army” about the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
In addition, in mid-March, Canada officially banned service providers from distributing Russian news channels RT (formerly Russia Today) and RT France, saying their programming was not in “the public interest”. “.
The EU has also banned these Russian media and others, but so far Moscow has not adopted equivalent retaliatory measures.