Russia shuts down German broadcaster's operations after Berlin bans RT DE
Russia has closed the Moscow-based bureau of German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and stripped its staff of their accreditation, in a retaliatory move after Berlin banned Russian broadcaster RT amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine's crisis.
The Russia foreign ministry announced the closure in a statement on Thursday, saying it will also "terminate the satellite and other broadcasting (output) of Deutsche Welle" on Russian territory.
The statement added that it was initiating the process of designating the German media a "foreign agent," and said further reciprocal measures will be announced in the future.
The Russian foreign ministry stressed that it would also bar entry to Russia for German officials involved in the “unfriendly” move to ban the state broadcaster.
Deutsche Welle — a German state-owned broadcaster — has services in 30 languages, including Russian.
The closure of Deutsche Welle in Moscow came after the German-language channel of Russian state TV network RT — RT DE — was blocked from Europe's satellite network on December 22 at the request of German authorities, less than a week after going on air.
Germany's broadcasting regulator on Wednesday claimed that it was banning the transmission of RT DE over the lack of a broadcasting license.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov censured the move as an "infringement" on freedom of speech, while RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan called the decision "complete nonsense.”
The row comes against a backdrop of rising tensions between Russia and NATO after Western governments accused Moscow of amassing thousands of troops along its borders close to Ukraine to carry out an invasion of its former Soviet neighbor.
Moscow rejects the allegations and says the deployments are defensive in nature.
Kremlin officials accuse the West of Russiophobia, saying it has no right to lecture Moscow on how to act after its eastward expansion and sowing seeds of chaos and mayhem in Iraq and Syria.
Russia has repeatedly reiterated that the expansion of NATO military infrastructure in Ukraine is a red line for Moscow and that any future expansion must exclude Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.
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