Russia warned this Saturday that it will retaliate against the French media in response to the blocking in France of the bank accounts of the Russian television channel RT France.
“The blocking of RT France accounts will lead to countermeasures against French media in Russia,” said a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as quoted by the official agency RIA Novosti.
The spokesman stressed that “if the French authorities do not stop terrorising Russian journalists, the measures will be such that they will be remembered for a long time.”
The director of RT France, Ksenia Fiódorova, reported on Friday on Telegram that the channel’s bank accounts had been frozen by the French authorities, who justified the decision with the new European Union sanctions package against Russia for the military campaign in Ukraine, adopted in December 2022.
Fiódorova indicated on Telegram that the measure “practically paralyzes” the activities of RT France, which, he added, “is not on any list and has the right to work in France.”
Accused of being instruments of disinformation and propaganda by the Kremlin, the media Sputnik and RT, including its French version RT France, have been banned, since March 2, from broadcasting in the EU, either on television or on the Internet. RT France decided to contest the suspension of broadcasts with the Court of Justice, arguing that it violated freedom of expression, contrary to EU law.
On July 27, 2022, the General Court of the European Union rejected an appeal filed by the information channel RT France (formerly Russia Today), controlled by the Kremlin, against the suspension of broadcasting decided within the framework of European sanctions against Moscow.
In a published judgment, the court considers that the “temporary and reversible ban” on broadcasts by RT France, the French subsidiary of the Russian international news channel, does not jeopardise freedom of expression, as the station alleged, and is “proportionate,” insofar as it is “appropriate and necessary” with a view to fulfilling the objective of the restrictive measures imposed by the EU against Russia for its military aggression against Ukraine.
