Moscow has called the decision of the German regulator to ban the broadcast of Russia Today in the country an “attack on freedom of expression”.
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Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday (February 3rd) condemned the German regulator’s ban on the Russian channel RT from broadcasting locally as a “attack on freedom of expression” and announced imminent retaliatory measures. Russia considers these measures by Germany to be “motivated by political considerations”, while tensions with Westerners are at their highest around Ukraine. For her part, the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, promised on Telegram retaliatory measures which will be announced on Thursday. The German organization explains, him, than “the necessary authorization according to media law” has not been “neither requested nor granted”.
On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry spoke of retaliatory measures against “German media accredited in Russia” and RT boss Margarita Simonian quoted Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international public media. Moscow has also promised a sanction against the “internet intermediaries who arbitrarily and unjustifiably deleted the channel’s accounts [RT] on their platforms”an apparent reference to the American giant YouTube, which had suspended RT’s German language account on December 16 on the day it went live.
Launched in 2005 as Russia Today, the Russian state-funded channel RT has grown with broadcasters and websites in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, German and Arabic. Considered a propaganda tool of the Kremlin internationally, it has sparked controversy in several countries.