MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th July, 2020) The upper house of the Russian parliament will invite the country's Foreign Ministry to provide a tougher response to the situation that RT and Sputnik face in the Baltic countries, Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said on Wednesday.
Lithuanian and Latvian media watchdogs have recently banned the broadcasting of five RT channels, explaining the decision by saying the channels are owned by Rossiya Segodnya Director-General Dmitry Kiselev, who is under EU sanctions. Notably, Rossiya Segodnya and RT are two different legal entities, RT is not chaired by Kiselev, and its editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, is not under any EU sanctions.
"It would be proper for us to send a request to the Foreign Ministry, asking it to provide adequate reaction regarding those who make such illegal decisions in violation of international obligation, in violation of democracy. We hope that there will be adequate reaction, not just condemnation," Matviyenko said.
The statement came as a comment to an address by the chairperson of the upper house's temporary commission on information policy, who said that the commission favors sanctions against Baltic officials in charge of making decisions on RT and Sputnik.
