Russia vows response to state media blocking on Telegram

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russia on Sunday vowed to retaliate after the channels of its state media were apparently blocked on the popular Telegram social media platform in the European Union (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.

Slamming the “constant campaign of repression against Russian media in nearly all European Union countries,” she said that “these attacks and similar ones against our media will not remain unanswered.”

“We reserve the right to respond in the same manner,” she said, denouncing the “censorship.”

Tensions between the EU and Russia soared after Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022.

Since then, nearly all the few opposition media outlets that were operating in Russia have been shut.