The UK decided to take a closer look at the work of RT: Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the national the regulator is revising the broadcasting permission of the Russian TV channel. And the British Secretary of Defense suddenly made a menacing historical digression. How is all this connected with the political and sanctions escalation?
The talk about the Russian TV channel came up during a meeting of the House of Commons of the British Parliament. The deputies demanded from the prime minister more sanctions against Moscow – financial, up to blocking access to the SWIFT system, and not only.
“Russia Today is the Kremlin’s propaganda tool. I see no reason to allow this channel to continue broadcasting in this country. Will the prime minister ask Ofcom to revise the license?” asks Labor Party leader Cyrus Starmer.
“I believe that my honorable friend, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sports, has already sent a request to Ofcom asking for a re-examination of the RT broadcast license issue. But I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we live in a democracy, in a country that believes in freedom of speech. I think it’s important that we leave the decision of what media should be banned up to Ofcom, not politicians,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
A respected friend, Digital and Media Minister Nadine Dorris, nods in the front row. And the British regulator promises to urgently study the issue:
“Recognizing the severity of the crisis in Ukraine, we are closely monitoring the situation and have already increased oversight of broadcasters’ coverage of these events. In Great Britain. We are expediting the handling of complaints in this area as a matter of urgency, and we will not hesitate to take swift action where necessary.”
RT says it has never violated broadcasting rules, and the British regulator has never previously questioned the channel’s license.
“The decision of Britain, which has obviously already been made, this decision did not surprise me at all. Rather, I was a little surprised with how frankly Johnson admitted that they had previously tried with all their might to hide that the decision of their so-called media regulator is on It’s actually the government’s decision.So the government asked the media regulator to revoke our license, and it’s absolutely clear that it will be revoked.The fact that in Britain they do not respect freedom of speech, except for their own speech, and the whole world has been taught that freedom of speech must be respected, this we understood for a long time. But the fact that they demonstrate it with such frontal straightforwardness is news,” Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, Rossiya Segodnya MIA, said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry promised: if RT there will be problems with broadcasting in the UK, this will not go unnoticed.
“We emphasized that we would respond, and we began to respond. This causes extreme displeasure among our partners when they see a response, because they have lived for a long time with a sense of absolute impunity for what is happening. If the threats that we heard today from Britain, and I emphasize that this is not about some media regulators or private individuals, but this is a threat from the British government: the Prime Minister and other representatives of the cabinet. So, if these threats are implemented, then we will respond, “said the official representative of the Foreign Ministry RF Maria Zakharova.
Threats of a completely different order are also heard from London. Defense Minister Ben Wallace, at a meeting with soldiers of the Scots Guards, said that the country’s army defeated the Russians and “can repeat it.”
“The Scottish Guards kicked Tsar Nicholas I in 1853 in the Crimea. We can always repeat it. We can always repeat it,” said British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace.
The Russian Ministry of Defense responded by advising British servicemen to study history better. And they were reminded of the course of the Balaklava battle of the Crimean War and the role of that same Scottish regiment.
“The only feat of this unit was that it simply did not run away, like the rest, from the onslaught of the Russian cavalry. It suffered very bloody losses. But it didn’t win any victories either,” explained Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
However, the legendary destruction on the same day by Russian artillerymen in just 20 minutes of an entire aristocratic English brigade of light cavalry under the command of Lord Cardigan entered much brighter in the history of the Battle of Balaklava. It was this “feat” of the British in the Crimean War that enriched all the languages of the world and military textbooks with the concept of “cannon fodder”.
“Out of 670 people, the British lost 409 people by two o’clock in the afternoon. This is more than two-thirds. These are losses that, by modern measures, are enough to disband an armed unit. British myths about miracles of heroism and fortitude are broken into real facts. Today, the British Minister of Defense should remember and these lessons of history, and the fact that the modern Russian Federation is not a backward Russian empire of the middle of the 19th century. These words of the British Minister of Defense are completely unnecessary bravado, all the more inappropriate for a nuclear power, “emphasizes the Executive Secretary of the Association of Historians of the Union State Dmitry Surzhik.
The spiral of sanctions and threats, meanwhile, continues to twist. The representative of the British Foreign Office at the UN General Assembly threatened Russia with new restrictive measures if the “campaign of aggression” continues.