“Since when [o presidente russo Vladimir] Putin launched his invasion and I was clear that the broadcaster could not use our free media to spread poisonous propaganda in British homes, “Culture Minister Nadine Doris told parliament.
“After withdrawing from Sky, Freeview and FreeSat broadcasting services, I was pleased to see yesterday that the channel is no longer broadcast on British television,” he added.
The minister said that while YouTube had already implemented the move, it had written to Meta and Dictok, the parent companies of Facebook and Instagram, to do “everything possible” to block access to the Arctic in the UK.
RT (formerly known as Russia Today) is under 27 scrutiny by the British media regulator Ofcom for its lack of impartiality in its coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Last week, London asked for a reconsideration of its broadcasting license, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would prefer it to come from an independent regulator rather than politicians in the name of “freedom of speech”.
Another Russian vehicle, the Sputnik, has been officially banned from the European Union, where its broadcast ban went into effect on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the BBC’s Russian language news site has more than tripled its viewership since the invasion, averaging 10.7 million visits a week, compared to the same period a year ago, according to the British Public Broadcasting Board.
Russian audience for the English-language site bbc.com rose 252% to 423,000 last week.
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