Moscow shuts down DW operations

Russia said on Thursday it was shutting down German broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s operations in Moscow and stripping its staff of their accreditation in a retaliatory move after Berlin banned Russian broadcaster RT DE.

Moscow said it would stop the German channel being broadcast in Russia and start proceedings that would see it declared a “foreign agent”, a designation that carries a negative Soviet-era connotation. The Russian foreign ministry also said it would bar entry to Russia for German officials involved in the move to ban RT DE.

Germany’s foreign ministry said Moscow’s measures had “no basis whatsoever and represent a renewed strain on German-Russian relations.”

“We firmly reject the comparison between Deutsche Welle and the broadcaster RT DE,” a spokesperson for the ministry said in a statement.

Germany’s MABB media watchdog and Commission for Licensing and Supervision (ZAK) of media institutions said this week that RT DE could not broadcast in Germany using a Serbian licence, a decision that angered Russia.

In a statement on its website detailing its retaliatory measures, Russia’s foreign ministry described the German move as “unfriendly”.