The bloc has singled out the Russian president’s speech at RT’s 20th anniversary gala as key “supporting evidence” to justify the move

The EU is preparing to prolong sanctions imposed on RT over the Ukraine conflict, according to a ‘secret’ letter received by the network.

The bloc placed restrictions on RT shortly after the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, accusing the network of “threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine.”

A number of senior Russian officials condemned the sanctions as an act of censorship and an attempt to silence voices that undermine Western narratives.

The letter from the EU Council, which it explicitly asked RT not to disclose to “the general public,” states that it “envisages maintaining the restrictive measures.” The document comes with a 36-page trove of “supporting evidence,” supposed to justify the restrictions.

A sizable part of the ‘evidence’ is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the gala event held late last year to mark the network’s two decades on air.

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“He regards RT as a ‘secret strategic and high-precision… weapon’ to defend Russia’s interests and create a more ‘just world order,’” the council’s summary of the speech reads. The president, however, actually said that RT’s “secret strategic high-precision weapon of intercontinental reach” was telling the truth. 

Other pieces of ‘evidence’ include a BBC article lamenting RT’s growing audience despite the bans imposed by the US and EU. Another is a piece by Reporters Without Borders sounding the alarm over an ad campaign organized by RT Doc in Italy to promote a documentary on the Donbass conflict orphans.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan mocked the letter and the ‘evidence’ it came with, ignoring the request not to publicize it. “We couldn’t care less what the organization that’s imposing ridiculous sanctions on us is telling us to do,” she wrote on Telegram.

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“The main argument for extending the sanctions is the president’s speech at RT’s 20th anniversary. And we’ve been threatening and undermining and will continue to do so,” she added.

RT has been repeatedly targeted with sanctions by numerous Western actors, with the years-long campaign against the network intensifying in the wake of the Ukraine conflict. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the network and its staff have been hit with more than 110 sanctions, along with asset freezes and other restrictions in recent years.