The RT France channel will close but its French-speaking site “will remain active”

► Why is RT France going to stop?

“After 5 years of relentlessness, the authorities in power have therefore achieved their ends: the closure of RT France”, announced on Saturday January 21, 2023, in a press release published on her Twitter account, the president and director of the Russian media Xenia Fedorova. The decision of the French public treasury, confirmed the day before by the Ministry of the Economy, makes according to her « impossible continuation of activities” of the French editor.

For its part, the RT France branch of the National Union of Journalists (SNJ) deplored this decision which will provoke “a hundred layoffs” of employees, already “hard hit” par “stigmatizations and amalgams”. According to the president of the channel, 123 French employees, including 77 press card holders, risk “not to be paid their salary for the month of January and will lose their job”.

“This decision is only the logical continuation of the European sanctions decided in March 2022, because, in substance, RT is not a media like any other”, notes Christophe Deloire, secretary general of the NGO Reporters Without Borders. Xenia Fedorova, for her part, rejects the accusations of ” disinformation “ or of “propaganda aimed at his chain. On the contrary, she denounces a « censure » et “raises the question of the future of media pluralism in France” and of “freedom of thought and expression in our society”.

► Is this the end of its distribution in Europe?

Questioned by Agence France-Presse, the Ministry of the Economy explained on Friday 19 that the freezing of the bank assets of RT France (subsidiary of Ano tv novosti, funded by the Russian state) was not a direct initiative of the French state, but an application of the European sanctions decided in December 2022.

Accused of being instruments of ” disinformation “ of the Kremlin, the Sputnik and RT media had been banned from broadcasting in the European Union shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine. Seized by RT France, European justice confirmed this decision last July. If the British or German editorial staff had closed, France continued to host a subsidiary of RT on its soil, established since 2017.

The sanctions providing for a ban on broadcasting but not on production, RT France no longer had a frequency but “continued and will continue to relay its content on mirror sites, via a VPN (virtual private network allowing you to browse the Web by bypassing blocking, Editor’s note) and social media »warns Maxime Audinet, researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM), and author of Russia Today, an influential media serving the Russian state (In).

This decision nevertheless marks the end of a “cycle of internationalization of the RT network in Europe”according to him. “It will take them some time to relocate content production from Moscow, which should cause production to drop in the coming weeks”.

► How can Russia react?

Shortly after the announcement of the shutdown of RT France, Moscow promised “retaliatory measures against the French media in Russia”. “They will be remembered if the French authorities do not stop terrorizing Russian journalists”warned a source within the Russian diplomacy, quoted by the Russian news agencies Ria Novosti and Tass.

“To suggest that Russia is the victim makes no sense. And let the Kremlin not make people believe that Western information can be freely disseminated in Russia, they have already extinguished Western media and freedom of the press in Russia”, reacts Christophe Deloire, of RSF, who does not prefer to consider the types of retaliation that could be envisaged.

On the other hand, the prohibition of a media “raises the question of who makes the decision”according to him. “We really need to build a legal framework in Europeinsists the leader of the NGO. This kind of decision must be made by an independent administrative authority, not a political entity. We are in a context of war, but we must always have in the field of the media procedural guarantees and democratic substance”.