The FINANCIAL — Latvian authorities shut down Russia’s pro-Kremlin news site Sputnik on March 29, calling it a “propaganda tool” and drawing an immediate rebuke from Moscow.
Latvia’s local domain registry suspended Sputnik’s right to hold the news site Sputniknews.lv, which was established only a few weeks ago to reach out to Latvia’s large Russian-speaking minority with articles in Russian and Latvian.
“We don’t regard Sputnik as a credible media source but as something else: a propaganda tool,” Latvian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raimonds Jansons told AFP.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the decision “blatant censorship” and insisted “the Russian mass media adheres to the highest standards of professionalism and ethics.”
Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of its parent company, Rossiya Segodnya, said Sputnik aims to counter Western “propaganda.”
Latvia has banned Russian media before, having shut down Russian state television broadcasts for several months in 2014.
The Russian Embassy in Latvia called the move against Sputnik “groundless” and said that Latvia had started “an information war.”
Latvia’s domain registry decided to shut the site after receiving a letter of concern from the Latvian Foreign Ministry, which drew attention to Sputnik’s coverage of Ukraine and routine denial of the embattled nation’s territorial integrity.
The ministry questioned whether the coverage might constitute a breach of European Union sanctions on Russia, which were imposed over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The annual report, Worldwide Threat Assessment, which was presented by Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on February 9, reads: “Rising frustration among Georgia’s elites and the public with the slow pace of Western integration and increasingly effective Russian propaganda raise the prospect that Tbilisi might slow or suspend efforts toward greater Euro-Atlantic integration.”
In 2014 Sputnik stopped broadcasting in Georgia only a week after it started.
R Radio, the local radio company who leased its frequency to Sputnik, was caught violating terms and conditions of its license.
Sputnik Georgia stopped broadcasting following recent local media reports that questioned its legality to broadcast. But the website Sputnik-Georgia still is accessible for Georgian users.
Source: Reuters, AFP, RFERL
Discussion about this post