Published 18 May 2024 at 09.48
Foreign. The European Council now announces that four more media channels – accused of spreading Russian propaganda – are banned from operating within the EU's borders.
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The decision follows previous bans on several Russia-linked media since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to the new rules, it is also illegal to offer a platform for content from these media organizations within the Union.
The players who are now also covered by the ban are the relatively small Czech news site Voice of Europe, the Russian news agency Ria Novosti and the Russian newspapers Izvestija and Rossijskaja Gazeta. The latter acts as the official gazette of the Russian government and publishes new laws, presidential decrees and other public documents to formally announce them to the public before they come into force.
The European Council justifies the decision by saying that the bans are necessary for to counter what they describe as a “systematic, international campaign of media and information manipulation, influence and serious distortion of facts” about the war in Ukraine. The European Commission, which is the Union's executive body, supports the decision, arguing that Russia poses a growing threat to EU “democracy” ahead of next month's European Parliament elections.