Meta — the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram — said Monday that it is banning Russian state media outlets such as RT from its platforms, days after the United States imposed sanctions on RT’s parent companies and accused them of acting as an arm of Moscow’s intelligence operations.
By Niha Masih
In a response to the ban, RT told The Washington Post that Meta’s move follows up on its blocking the network in Europe two years ago. “Don’t worry, where they close a door, and then a window, our ‘partisans’ (or in your parlance, guerrilla fighters) will find the cracks to crawl through.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, described the move as “very negative.”
“Meta discredits itself with these actions. And, of course, such selective actions against Russian media are unacceptable. That is why we have an extremely negative attitude to this,” he said. “This complicates the prospects for normalizing our relations with Meta.”
The sanctions on RT’s parent companies, Rossiya Segodnya and TV-Novosti, were announced Friday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken said RT is used by the Kremlin to carry out international cyberintelligence and covert influence operations as well as to help obtain arms for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
New information revealed, Blinken said, that these entities “are no longer merely fire hoses of Russian propaganda and disinformation. They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus.”
In a statement, the State Department said RT and its employees have coordinated with the Kremlin to influence next month’s elections in Moldova.
Russian state media outlets have faced increasing scrutiny in recent years over concerns about disinformation, with the aim of influencing elections in other countries as well as the spread of propaganda over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Meta said in 2022 following the invasion that it was “restricting access” to RT and Sputnik, another Russian state-owned media outlet, across the European Union upon requests from governments and E.U. officials. At the time, YouTube and TikTok enforced similar bans in Europe.
Earlier this month, U.S. intelligence officials said Russia’s covert efforts to influence the 2024 presidential election are the most active foreign threat this political season.
The Biden administration recently indicted two Russian employees of RT, accusing them of paying an American media company to distribute English-language videos on social platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X. YouTube subsequently took down several right-wing politics channels linked to the allegations.
Separately, the Treasury Department this month announced actions against RT executives and Russian state-owned media outlets as part of a coordinated U.S. response to “Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.”
Natalia Abbakumova, Catherine Belton and Naomi Nix contributed to this report.
