Russia’s pro-Kremlin RT television channel has been taken off the air in the UK following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Culture Minister Nadine Dorries told parliament on Thursday.
The country’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom has not revoked the broadcaster’s licence, unlike the European Union, which on Wednesday banned RT and Sputnik from the 27-nation bloc.
But access to the channel in the UK has been affected by the EU ban as satellite companies based in Europe provide the RT feed to UK providers.
Putin “must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread poisonous propaganda into British homes,” Dorries said.
“I was very glad to see yesterday that the channel is now officially off air on British televisions after it was shut down on Sky, Freeview and Freesat,” she said.
The minister said she had contacted social networks Meta and TikTok “asking them to do everything that they can do to prevent access to RT in the UK, as they’ve done in Europe”.
Meanwhile, the audience of the BBC’s Russian language news website has risen from 3.1 million to 10.7 million since the Russian invasion began a week ago, Dorries added.
“Despite his best efforts to censor reporting in Russia, Putin’s own citizens are turning to factual independent information in their millions,” Dorries said.
Ofcom on Wednesday said it had opened 27 investigations into the “impartiality” of news programmes aired on the state-funded RT.
The regulator first announced its probe on Monday, saying it had seen “a significant increase” in the number of potential breaches on RT news programmes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian-controlled television channels have come under fire as the West and its allies seek to crack down on misinformation about Moscow’s onslaught on Ukraine.
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