Vladimir Putin hopes Russia Today channel can operate without being “discriminated” in France

Published on : 12/22/2021 – 07:56Modified : 12/22/2021 – 07:57

Diplomacy also plays a role in the media. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday (December 21st) that he hoped the Russian public 24-hour news broadcaster Russia Today (RT) could operate without being “discriminated against” in France, where it has been accused of being an “organ. of propaganda “.

In a telephone interview Tuesday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Poutin “drew attention to the restrictions which continue to target the Russia Today news channel in France” (RT), the Kremlin said in a statement. .

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He expressed “the hope that the channel will have the same possibilities to work, without any discrimination, that the French media have at their disposal in Russia”, underlines the press release.

Launched in 2005 as “Russia Today”, the state-funded RT has grown with broadcasters and websites in multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, German and Arabic.

Suspension in Germany

She has sparked controversy in many countries, notably in the United States, where she had to register as a “foreign agent”, and in the United Kingdom, where authorities threatened to withdraw her broadcasting license. . The channel has been banned in several countries, including Lithuania and Latvia.

In France, RT has long been accused by the authorities and several public media of being a Kremlin “propaganda” tool.

Last week, YouTube suspended a German-language RT account, accusing the channel of violating the video hosting platform’s terms of service. Russia immediately denounced “censorship”.

For its part, YouTube justified this blocking by the fact that the launch of this German channel was an attempt to circumvent previous terminations, last September.

The video site of the American Google had blocked, at the end of September, the RT DE and Der Fehlende Part accounts, for having violated the internal rules of the community by disseminating “false information” on the coronavirus and for having wanted to bypass a suspension download. Moscow then threatened to block YouTube in Russia.

With AFP