Moscow shuts down German broadcaster's Russian operations in retaliatory move
India Today
In retaliation for Berlin's ban on Russian broadcaster RT DE, Moscow shut down the German broadcaster's Russian operations on Thursday.
Russia said on Thursday it was shutting down the operations of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Moscow and stripping its staff of their accreditation in a retaliatory move after Berlin banned Russian broadcaster RT DE.
Moscow said it would stop the German channel being broadcast in Russia and start proceedings that would see it declared a "foreign agent," a designation that carries a negative Soviet-era connotation.
The Russian foreign ministry said it would also bar entry to Russia for German officials involved in the move to ban RT DE.
State-funded Deutsche Welle said it formally protested against the move and would take legal action. "We are being made a pawn here in a way that media only have to experience in autocracies," Deutsche Welle Director Peter Limbourg said in a statement.
Hendrik Wuest, premier of North Rhine-Westfalia state where Deutsche Welle is headquartered, called Russia's action "a massive and deliberate attack on the freedom of press, which we strongly condemn."
The row comes amid wider tensions with the West over Ukraine that are an early test of political relations between Berlin and Moscow after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took office in December.
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