This time, it feels like the end for RT France. He becomes ” impossible “ for the Russian news channel in French, from ” to pursue [son] activity under the same conditions as before”, announced the president and director of information of RT France Xenia Fedorova, Wednesday, January 18, in an internal letter that we were able to consult. The information was confirmed at World by a station spokesperson, before letting us know that “any public communication of the chain” will, ” If it’s happened “through the Twitter account of Mme Fyodorova.
The leader explained that she had received a letter from her bank informing her that “all the funds present on [notre] accounts are frozen at the request of the Directorate General of the Treasury”. Without money, it becomes impossible for RT (formerly Russia Today) to pay the salaries of the hundred employees still in office, as well as the invoices of the technical service providers it uses.
Among the employees, reports one of them, there is a fear of not being paid at the end of January, but also of finding themselves permanently unemployed for having worked in a media stamped as a propagandist. Additional information could be given to them during two CSEs which should be announced on Friday and Monday.
Targeted
For Xenia Fedorova, this Treasury intervention is the consequence of the ninth package of European sanctions decided in December, and intended to crack down on four Russian channels accused of manipulation of information and Russian propaganda. Targeted by the decision, the Kremlin news agency and propaganda organ ANO TV Novosti (subsidiary of RIA Novosti) is “the sole shareholder and parent company” of RT France, recalls Mme Fedorova in her internal message. “In application of the holding criterion, the assets of RT France are to be frozen by the subject actors who ensure the freezing of assets and economic resources”confirms the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
With the closure of RT France, if confirmed, “it is probably the end of all the relocated apparatus of the RT network in the West”, and so “of a desire to internationalize the channel which began in 2010 with the creation of RT America”, advances Maxime Audinet, researcher at the Strategic Research Institute of the Military School (Irsem). Even if RT still has offices outside Europe, RT France, which benefited from a budget of 26.7 million in 2021, was indeed, in recent months, the last real editorial office located outside Moscow.
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