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RT-DE moderator Stefan Pollak
The Russian state media RT and Sputnik are no longer allowed in the EU, Brussels announced.
The measure must be implemented by the media regulators of the EU states.
"Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures," said EU Commission Vice Vera Jourova on Tuesday evening after a meeting with representatives of the Group of European Regulators for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA).
“We all stand for freedom of speech, but it must not be misused to spread war propaganda.
The Kremlin has weaponized information.”
The current punitive measure affects all distribution channels of RT and Sputnik in the EU, such as cable, satellite or Internet.
RT offshoots in German or French, for example, are also affected.
RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan has been subject to EU sanctions since last week.
These relate to an entry ban
, and possible assets
in the EU were also frozen.
The RT and Sputnik journalists themselves should not be prevented from doing their jobs, EU officials stressed.
The sanctions were drawn up very carefully, it said, also in view of concerns about possible cuts in press freedom.
The sanctions against RT and Sputnik should be temporary and only last "until the aggression against Ukraine has ended and the Russian Federation and its media have stopped their propaganda actions against the Union and its member states," said an EU official.
Facebook group Meta and video app Tiktok have already restricted access to RT and Sputnik content in the EU.
Independent of the EU decision, German media regulators have threatened a fine of 25,000 euros against RT's German-language live program, as the Berlin-Brandenburg media authority announced on Tuesday to the German Press Agency.
The regulators want to ensure that RTDE Productions GmbH, based in Berlin, discontinues the live TV program of RT DE.
The reason is that the media authorities issued a broadcasting ban at the beginning of February because there was no broadcasting license for the program in Germany.
A license is basically a prerequisite for offering a radio program in this country.
The German-language live program has been broadcast since December.
nga/dpa