RUSSIA BANS 81 EU MEDIA OUTLETS IN TIT-FOR-TAT MOVE

The 27-member bloc had banned four Russian media outlets from broadcasting in May for what it called the spread of propaganda about the war in Ukraine.

“The Russian side has repeatedly and at various levels warned that politically motivated harassment of domestic journalists and unfounded bans on Russian media in the EU will not go unnoticed,” it said in a statement Tuesday, blaming the EU leadership for the escalation and calling the ban “proportionate”.

The outlets are from 25 European countries and also include pan-European media like Politico. French outlets were most heavily targeted with nine bans, affecting global news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Le Monde and Liberation newspapers among others.

The German Der Spiegel, the Spanish El Pais and El Mundo, the Finnish Yle, the Irish national broadcaster RTE, and Italy’s RAI television channel and la Repubblica newspaper are some of the other prominent banned outlets.

Moscow said that it is open to rescinding its ban on the outlets if restrictions on Russian media are lifted.

Last month, the EU branded Voice of Europe, the RIA news agency, and the Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers as “Kremlin-linked propaganda networks” and stripped of their broadcasting rights in the bloc.