MOSCOW, November 27. /TASS/. Germany has moved to close the local bureau of Russia’s Channel One television, ordering the bureau employees in Berlin to leave the country, a reporter with the TV channel said.

"[TV channel employees] Ivan Blagoy and Dmitry Volkov were ordered to leave Germany in the first half of December," Blagoy said live on Channel One.

According to him, his bureau received the corresponding documents, a 10-page report that substantiates the move, citing EU sanctions, from the German authorities on Tuesday. "A German lawyer who analyzed the papers at our request shrugged his shoulders and said that it was a non-case. We have not violated German laws while staying in Germany and we meet all necessary criteria. And yet, we were shown the door," Blagoy lamented.

He suspects the German decision has something to do with a recent TV report about the arrest of a German citizen who was involved in sabotaging a gas metering station in Kaliningrad in the spring of 2024 as he arrived from Poland to blow up a Russian energy facility. "The order to leave the country came almost immediately after a report about the arrest in Russia of a German citizen, Nikolai Gaiduk, who attempted to smuggle explosives into our country, was broadcast," Blagoy said. "The Channel One crew showed where the defendant lived in Hamburg. We visited places and showed the street where he had met with a curator from Ukrainian special services," the TV reporter explained.

The TV channel quoted the German statement as reading that "Channel One’s activities pose a major and direct threat to public order and security in Germany and the European Union as they jeopardize the formation of public opinion and decision-making across [EU] member countries."

Russia will announce measures in response to this German move later on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS.