The text provides for various prison sentences of up to fifteen years. As a result, the BBC has decided to suspend the work of its journalists in the country.
The reprisals of Vladimir Poutine towards the journalists not taking again the official propaganda of the Kremlin were not made wait. On Friday March 4, the Russian Parliament adopted a text criminalizing the dissemination “misleading informationabout the actions of the Russian Armed Forces in military operations in Ukraine.
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Russian and international journalists who do not take up official dispatches will be considered as senders of “fake news“. This amendment, adopted at third reading by the Duma, provides for various prison terms of up to 15 years. This text does not only apply to information professionals, but to all citizens present in Russia. In addition, a separate amendment, also adopted on Friday, provides for sanctions for “calls to impose sanctions on Russia“.
After the adoption of the text by Parliament, the BBC decided to suspend “temporarily“the work of its journalists in Russia to ensure their”security“. “The safety of our teams is paramount and we are not prepared to put them at risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their job”wrote general manager Tim Davie pointed out in a statement, praising their “courage, determination and professionalism“. Tim Davie clarified that the BBC would continue to report in Russian from outside Russia. In recent days, many Russians had turned to the BBC’s Russian-language service site for information. Its weekly audience averages around 10.7 million.
French media in Russia
As for the French media present in Russia, France 24 and RFI have around ten employees there to date (working in French, English, Arabic and Russian). They are both special envoys (permanent or not) of French nationality and non-permanent collaborators, of French or Russian nationality or bi-nationals. “All continue to work, with the required caution, within the framework of a close watch on their security and are in permanent contact with our director of editorial security, the directors of the media and the chairman and general management of the group”explains France Media World.
Since the suspension on Wednesday of the media financed by the Kremlin RT and Sputnik in the European Union, the teams of the French audiovisual media France 24, RFI and Euronews, present in Russia were already expecting severe sanctions against the international media. “Regarding the distribution of our media in Russia, it is not subject to restrictions to date either in broadcast (France 24 in French and in English), or in digital (all our offers including RFI in Russian )“, abounds France Media World.
Independent media sites unavailable
A few hours before the adoption of the text on Friday, the Russian media regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced that it had restricted access to several media: the independent site Meduza, the site of German international radio and television Deutsche Welle, that of Radio Svoboda, Russian branch of RFE/RL, as well as the site of the Russian-language service of the BBC. According to teams from GlobalCheck, a monitoring service against Internet censorship, the home pages of Meduza and Svoboda were completely inaccessible. Those of the BBC and Deutsche Welle opened intermittently, and some articles on the war in Ukraine were blocked. Access to the Facebook site (Meta) has also been restricted.
Since February 24, Russian authorities have banned the use of words like “war” and “invasion“. The Kremlin and the media under its control present the invasion of Ukraine as a “special operation” of a limited scale aimed at “protect” the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine from one “genocide”.
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