EU to ban RT, Sputnik
The European Union heads toward banning an alternative narrative to what is going on in Ukraine so they can have the field for their propaganda alone, which has been especially prominent as of late.
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The studio at RT France, in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris
The European Union will ban Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced Sunday, accusing the pair of "spreading harmful disinformation."
The European chief did not specify whether this ban would extend to the outlets' websites or social media pages or would be limited to their television broadcasts.
The European Union will ban what she claimed to be "the Kremlin's media machine," calling the act an "unprecedented" step.
"The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union," she asserted. "We are developing tools to ban toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe," she boldly claimed despite the mounting Western propaganda on a wide array of issues all over the world.
The Association of European Journalists on Saturday called on the EU to ban RT all over the bloc and "remove" its journalists.
RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, sanctioned by the EU just a few days ago, responded to the latest ban by assuring the agency's journalists that "not a single person who faithfully worked and continues to work for us will be laid off in any country."
Germany's broadcasting regulator had banned the transmission of Russia's RT Deutsch-speaking broadcaster in the country.
The transmission of RT DE was "prohibited because it does not have the necessary broadcasting license," the authorization and oversight commission claimed earlier this month.
RT had been subject to European censorship, with YouTube and Meta demonetizing RT's accounts, and Google itself prohibiting the download of RT's mobile app on Ukrainian territory.
The ban was accompanied by European announcements of closing off the airspace with Russia and the bloc pledging to supply Ukraine with arms against Moscow.
