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RT, formerly Russia Today, is a Russian state-funded international news network that operates pay television and free-to-air channels for audiences outside Russia as well as internet content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Portuguese and Serbian.

It is a brand of TV-Novosti, a non-profit registered as an autonomous non-commercial organisation and founded by the state news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005. In December 2008 the government added TV-Novosti to its list of organisations of strategic importance to Russia.

Channels and Growth

RT is a multilingual service with channels in five main languages: the original English-language channel launched in 2005, Arabic in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America operated from 2010 to 2022 and RT UK from 2014 to 2022, and regional services produced local content. RT is the parent of the Ruptly video agency, which owns the Redfish channel and the Maffick digital media company.

Criticism and Regulation

RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. Academics, fact-checkers and reporters, including some current and former staff, have identified it as a source of disinformation and conspiracy theories, and the UK regulator Ofcom repeatedly found the channel in breach of its impartiality rules, including broadcasts of materially misleading content.

In 2012 the editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared RT to the Russian Ministry of Defence, saying the channel was waging an information war. In September 2017 RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the US Department of Justice.

Bans

Ukraine banned RT in 2014, Latvia and Lithuania followed in 2020, and Germany banned RT DE in February 2022. During the invasion of Ukraine the European Union and Canada formally banned the network, providers in more than ten countries suspended broadcasts, and social platforms restricted links and content.

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