We ‘spit on sanctions’ – RT editor-in-chief
The European Union’s sanctions aimed at restricting access to Russian state-backed media outlets have not been very effective, an article by Bloomberg acknowledged on Thursday.
“The Kremlin appears to have the last laugh,” and such media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, remain readily available within the bloc through a system of mirror websites, the article reads.
“We spit on your sanctions,” RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on the matter in remarks relayed by her press office to Bloomberg.
RT has been using at least 19 mirror sites to provide access to its content to its EU audience, according to Bloomberg’s estimates. Its main domain, RT.com, was blocked shortly after the conflict between Moscow and Kiev broke out in February 2022.
One of the mirrors, namely swentr.site (i.e ‘RT News’ mirrored), received nearly 3 million hits in October alone, Bloomberg noted, citing data traffic counter Semrush. The main domain, despite being blocked in multiple markets, still garnered a massive 141 million hits over the same period, it added.
The article echoed a piece penned by Tobias Senzig, editor-in-chief of Luxembourg’s Tageblatt newspaper, earlier this month. Senzig bemoaned the EU’s failures to restrict access to Sputnik and RT and admitted the crackdown on Russian state-affiliated media had “promised a lot and delivered little,” while “pro-Russian narratives” have grown increasingly popular in the bloc.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned the hostile actions taken against Russian media by the collective West and the EU in particular. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has described the bloc’s approach as “a manifestation of liberal dictatorship.” The Western effort is focused on “trying by any means to cut the people of their countries from alternative points of view, to force them into consuming only information broadcast by Washington and Brussels as the ultimate truth,” she suggested earlier this year.
