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The Russian channel RT is pinned by the British regulator. Ofcom fined him 225,000 euros for his lack of "impartiality", notably in the treatment of the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. Furious, Moscow threatened in return to make the same thing to the British media in Russia.
With our correspondent in London , Muriel Delcroix
Ofcom's investigation has determined that the RT channel, former Russia Today, financed by the Kremlin; breached the code of impartiality of the British media on seven occasions during programs broadcast between March and April 2018, that is to say, in the weeks following Sergey Skripal's Novichok poisoning scandal and his Yulia girl.
The British authorities had immediately attributed the attack to Russia, which has always denied and RT presenters had repeatedly expressed doubts about the connection between Skripal poisoning and the Kremlin. The other programs targeted by the British regulator concerned the conflict in Syria.
Russia reacted by treating Ofcom's decision as a " direct act of censorship " and immediately retaliated by launching investigations into Russian BBC service, reviving the latent conflict between London and Moscow. For its part, the RT channel considered the fine unjust and complained of " the particularly disproportionate size of the fine ".
However, Ofcom could have been tougher and went so far as to revoke RT's license and thus prevent it from issuing in the UK. Instead and in the face of a rather small audience in the country with only 330,000 viewers a week, the regulator chose a financial penalty with the humiliating obligation for the channel to advertise on its air the results of the broadcast. investigation of his impartiality.