VILNIUS, July 8. /TASS/. The radio and television commission of Lithuania, accountable to the parliament, which controls the activities of radio and television broadcasters in the country, has banned the broadcasting of the Russian RT Group TV channels, chairman of the regulatory commission Mantas Martisius told reporters on Wednesday.
"Considering the recommendations of the Foreign Ministry, the commission decided to halt the retransmitting of five RT programs on Lithuanian territory," he said. The regulatory commission’s decision will come into effect after its publication on the commission’s website. "It will happen on Thursday," the chairman added.
He also said that the representatives of the RT Group were not invited to the meeting where the decision on the ban was made. According to him, "we are not talking about violations," which the commission normally discusses with the representatives of the other side, but about the sanctions imposed by the EU Council "against the RT Director General Dmitry Kiselyov who controls this structure." Kiselyov is the director general of MIA Rossiya Segodnya.
The ban will include the RT channel, its HD version, as well as RT Spanish, RT Documentary, and RT Documentary HD. Russian TV channels in Lithuania are accessible only to cable users and satellite TV dishes owners.
Earlier, on June 30, Latvia’s National Electronic Mass Media Council decided to ban the transmission of seven Russian channels of the RT Group in the country. Commenting on the move, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called on international structures to provide a reaction to the actions of the regulating body. According to her, such discriminatory steps taken by Latvian officials against Russian media resources and the attempts to rid the informational space of alternative points of view are a blatant violation of international law, namely the law of freedom of opinion and equal access to information.