Britain Sanctions 14 More Russian Entities and People over Disinformation

Glob­al media is report­ing that Britain has sanc­tioned 14 more Russ­ian enti­ties and peo­ple, includ­ing state media orga­ni­za­tions, for spread­ing “fake news and nar­ra­tives.” Accord­ing to a Reuters report:

March 31, 2022 Britain announced sanc­tions on 14 more Russ­ian enti­ties and peo­ple on Thurs­day, includ­ing state media organ­i­sa­tions behind RT and Sput­nik and some senior fig­ures, say­ing it was tar­get­ing those who push out Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s “fake news and nar­ra­tives”.  Britain is act­ing in con­cert with its West­ern allies to try to crip­ple Rus­si­a’s econ­o­my as pun­ish­ment for its inva­sion of Ukraine, and has already sanc­tioned more than 1,000 indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es.  Among those sanc­tioned on Thurs­day were RT’s man­ag­ing direc­tor, Alex­ey Nikolov, Sergey Brilev, a promi­nent news anchor at the state-owned Rossiya Tele­vi­sion and Radio net­work, and Sput­nik Edi­tor-in-Chief Anton Anisi­mov.  The gov­ern­ment said it was also direct­ly sanc­tion­ing state media organ­i­sa­tions, includ­ing Krem­lin fund­ed TV-Novosti which owns RT, and Rossiya Segod­nya, which con­trols news agency Sputnik.

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to the UK for­eign office,  the list includes the fol­low­ing peo­ple and entities:

• Sergey Brilev, a famous TV anchor on Russ­ian state-owned media Rossiya and pro­pa­gan­dist for Putin
• TV-Novosti, own­er of RT, for­mer­ly Rus­sia Today
• Rossiya Segod­nya, which con­trols the Sput­nik news agency
• Alek­san­dr Zharov, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Gazprom-Media and for­mer Head of the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, and Mass Media (Roskom­nad­zor)
• Alex­ey Nikolov, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of RT
• Anton Anisi­mov, Head of Sput­nik Inter­na­tion­al Broadcasting
• Mikhail Miz­int­sev, a promi­nent Russ­ian Colonel-Gen­er­al who is the Chief of the Nation­al Defence Com­mand and Con­trol Centre
• Sev­en indi­vid­u­als con­nect­ed to the Strate­gic Cul­ture Foundation

In March, Ofcom announced that due to Rus­si­a’s new laws, which effec­tive­ly crim­i­nal­ize any inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism, it revoked RT’s license to broad­cast in the UK. Accord­ing to the UK for­eign office, the new sanc­tions “will ensure RT will not be able to find its way back on UK televisions.”

UK media recent­ly revealed that British busi­ness­man Christo­pher Wood, run­ning the firm behind the UK arm of RT, has earned more than £2m from the firm in just three years.