Sharp decision to tackle a strategy based on fraud. The European Union (EU) will not allow the “Kremlin media engine” to thrive to sacrifice Russia in its conflict with Ukraine. To ensure that this is met, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen announced this Sunday that Twenty-Seven would ban broadcasts to Russia’s main international television, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnikand its subsidiaries.

This unprecedented refusal by the EU was intended, according to Von der Leyen, to immediately end the spread of “his lies to justify Putin’s war and sow division” in the political community and thereby end the ongoing campaign of disinformation by Russian pro-media.

While this is an activity that international authorities, examiners and other organizations have been observing in both media for more than a decade, now, in the midst of the armed conflict with Ukraine, false informationmisinterpreted and the montage becomes much clearer.

Putin’s statements are reproduced daily on both platforms, such as: “What happened in Ukraine is an action that we are forced to take. They don’t give us the option of acting any other way” or “Kiev has chosen an aggressive pathwhich is not needed at a time when diplomacy must be carried out”.

Faced with a context plagued by historical strides and continuous novelty, doubts are now emerging regarding the new main actors: Who is who in media battle parallel to war? What is your editorial line? Who is leading them?

Sputnik, conspiracy factory

On November 10, 2014, the Russian state agency Rossiya Segodnya made Sputnik news agency with the aim of widening the channels for the dissemination of Russian government propaganda. For your startup, Valdimir Putin asks journalist Dmitri Kiselyov . for helpbetter known as ‘Putin’s mouthpiece’.

In the same way, the media branch of the Russian president – also deputy director of television holding company VGTRK – was appointed as new website director for Margarita Simonián, which will select the platform name. In an interview with The New York Times in 2017, the head of Sputnik admitted that he made the decision because he thought it was “the only Russian word that has a positive connotation.”

However, beyond anecdotes, the new government service had a very clear set of goals. As Kiselyov openly states, the goal is to reach a global audience “tired of aggressive propaganda promoting a unipolar world and wanting a different perspective.” However, Putin has publicly acknowledged that the media founded to “break the global Anglo-Saxon media monopoly”.

Far from being its own definition, over the years its activity has shown an editorial line based on anti-globalization, anti-system and anti-liberal discourse and several international fact-checkers have accused the agency of spreading “grossly distorted” information to improve the public image of the Russian government.

Appropriately in October 2017 Twitter banned Sputnik -as well as RT – from buying ads on its platform after US intelligence reports were revealed confirming that the agency had been used by the Russian government as a tool to interfered in the US presidential election from 2016.

The same, Facebook removed hundreds of pages in 2019 from a social network masquerading as an independent news site, but they under the control of Sputnik workers.

In short, there are many occasions where organizations, platforms and politicians denounce their bad practices and propaganda activities. one’s own former correspondent Sputnik at the White House published on its Twitter account that the agency did not want its journalists to have a “reputation of their own”, or a signature, because “Lies are easier to spread if you don’t have credit“.

The outlet currently has an operations center in Moscow, but has offices in Washington, Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, London, India and Edinburgh and publishes in English, Spanish, Polish and Serbo-Croatian.

Russia Today or ‘TelePutin’

Broadcasting of the television channel RT (Russia Today) began in 2005. In this case, its creation was motivated by The Kremlin’s main need is to inform everything that is happening in Russia abroad.

For this he had the then Minister of Communications Mikhail Lesin and press spokesman Vladimir Putin, Alexei Gromovwho appointed it, Margarita Simonián, television director.

Ambitious project ‘leaders’ seeking to present a “more balanced” image of Russia are hired 300 journalists. Four years later, a report by the European Commission came in comparing the international channel to BBC World News and CNN International. Quite a success for Putin.

This favorable projection for the president has also meant that, for many years, a Moscow-based TV station with channels in four languages ​​was accused by Western media of being a propaganda channel for the Russian government and its foreign policy of using “materially misleading content.”

In response to the accusations, the RT leadership assured them that they would “wage an information war against the entire Western world.”

British media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly threatened the channel with sanctions. for “repeated violations of its standards of impartiality.” In addition, as happened with Sputnik, former workers also talk about RT ethics.

For example, in 2014 Liz Wahlone of the presenters on RT America, stepped down in person at the end of his newscast, saying publicly that he couldn’t be a part of “a network financed by the Russian government that covers up President Putin’s actions.”.

Previous international restrictions

Despite the fact that the European order to stop broadcasting the media has been ‘shocking’, for the protagonists it is not the first time they have been punished at an international level.

in 2016 Turkey blocks access to Sputnik content and in July 2019, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth of Nations UK bans RT and Sputnik from attending Global Conference on Media Freedom in London for his “active role in spreading disinformation.”

In that same year Estonian bank freezes accounts linked to Sputnik and a year later Sputnik’s Estonia office closed shortly after police warned its journalists of possible criminal charges.

RT has also suffered from worldwide bans. In 2017, its American delegation was required to register as a foreign agent with the US Department of Justice to be required to disclose its financial information. Previously, RT was banned in Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany.

Russo-Ukrainian War

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