Russia’s Sputnik News Agency Leaves Britain

UK media is report­ing that Russ­ian news agency Sput­nik announced it will dis­con­tin­ue oper­a­tions in Britain and move its Eng­lish-speak­ing report­ing to Wash­ing­ton and Moscow. Accord­ing to a Reuters arti­cle:

April 2, 2021 Russ­ian news agency Sput­nik will halt oper­a­tions in Britain and move its Eng­lish lan­guage ser­vice to Moscow and Wash­ing­ton, the media group that launched it in 2014 said on Fri­day, at a time when Russ­ian-British rela­tions have hit a low point.  Rossiya Segod­nya said the move was part of a plan to reor­ga­nize its inter­na­tion­al pres­ence in a more effec­tive man­ner. It said that Sput­nik, which has offices in Lon­don and Edin­burgh, would con­tin­ue cov­er­ing British news.

Read the rest here.

Sput­nik is a Russ­ian state-owned news agency estab­lished in 2014 and oper­at­ing in over 30 lan­guages. It has been fre­quent­ly accused of spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion and is mon­i­tored by the strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion divi­sions of the EU and NATO.

In March, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that Sput­nik was resum­ing its activ­i­ties in Esto­nia after hav­ing sus­pend­ed its activ­i­ties a year ear­li­er due to sanc­tions imposed on Dmitri Kisseljov, the head of the media group that owns Sputnik.