Russia has vowed to retaliate after the channels of its state media were apparently blocked on the popular Telegram social media platform in the EU.
On Sunday the channels of Ria Novosti news agency, Rossiya 1, Pervyi Kanal and NTV television, and Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers were not accessible in several countries, including France, Belgium, Poland, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy, according to media reports. Neither Telegram nor EU sources have yet commented on the disruption. Moscow called the move “an act of censorship”.
“The systematic cleansing of all undesirable sources of information from the information space continues,” foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, said. The EU had previously banned Russian state media such as Ria Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta from being distributed in the bloc, accusing them with disseminating propaganda.