In the midst of the war in Ukraine, Moscow is tightening its control over information
The texts adopted this Friday allow the Russian authorities to strengthen their arsenal to control the story they tell the Russian population of the invasion of Ukraine.
AP - Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr.
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
In the midst of the invasion of Ukraine, the deputies of the lower house of the Russian Parliament voted this Friday morning a text muzzling the press more, but also the entire population.
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The deputies are expanding the repressive arsenal a little more.
According to the amendment adopted this Friday by the Duma during an extraordinary session, anyone who publishes "
false information
" about the armed forces now risks up to 15 years in prison.
For eight years now, journalists have been banned from talking about army losses and for several months now, no publication on the morale of the troops has been authorized.
Words like "
war
" or "
invasion
" are also prohibited.
A new step has just been taken with a deliberately vague text, which should allow the Russian authorities to repress any criticism of the armed forces in full offensive on Ukraine.
Because Moscow claims that "
fake news
" is used by "
enemies
".
Understand: the United States and its allies, to stir up divisions in Russia.
A second amendment, also voted on this Friday morning, prohibits "
calls to impose sanctions on Russia
", a country facing
harsh Western retaliatory measures
for its invasion of Ukraine.
BBC withdraws journalists from Russia
These texts, which apply both to the media and to Russian and foreign individuals, still had to be approved by the upper house on Friday.
They allow the authorities to strengthen their arsenal to control the story they tell the Russian population of the invasion of Ukraine, presented as a limited operation aimed at protecting Russian speakers from a “
genocide
”.
In a sign of the importance for Moscow to maintain control, the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matvienko, accused the West of having “
launched an information war against Russia unprecedented in its scale and its aggressiveness.
".
Following this adoption, and believing that Moscow seemed to want to “
criminalize independent journalism
”, the BBC announced that it was withdrawing all its journalists from Russia to ensure their “
safety
”.
The general manager of the British media, Tim Davie, nevertheless specified that he would continue to inform in Russian from outside Russia.
The independent Russian newspaper
Novaya Gazeta
was forced to remove content to avoid sanctions.
Two media had already taken the lead.
On Thursday, after authorities blocked their sites, the radio station
Echo of Moscow announced its self-dissolution, and the independent television channel Dojd suspended its activity until further notice.
The Znak
news site
followed this example and also announced on Friday that it was stopping its work "
due to the large number of restrictions that have recently appeared in the functioning of the media in Russia
".
Moreover, this morning, on the Russian-language sites of the BBC and Deutsche Welle, certain articles are no longer accessible and Internet users can no longer open the home pages of two independent sites, Meduza and Svoboda.
(and with
AFP
)
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