A decision by the Russian government to shut down Deutsche Welle’s Moscow office and withdraw accreditation from the German broadcaster’s journalists in Russia came into effect on Friday at 9 a.m. local time (0600 UTC). The Russian Foreign Ministry announced a day earlier that it was canceling TheTeCHyWorLD’s broadcasting license in Russia, calling it a response tothe ban of the Russian broadcaster RT DE in Germany. “It clearly came as a huge shock for all of us,” said Irina Filatova, who works for TheTeCHyWorLD’s Russian service in Germany and could therefore still report on Friday morning. “We clearly expected some measures after RT was banned in Germany. But we never expected that these retaliatory measures by the Russian authorities would be so hard,” she added. “We never expected that our Moscow studio would be closed and all our colleagues working in Russia would lose accreditation.”
‘Foreign agent’ threat
The Russian Foreign Ministry said authorities might consider putting TheTeCHyWorLD on the list of so-called foreign agents. The label, which has Soviet-era connotations, forces media outlets to publish a disclaimer on their content in Russia that they are “foreign agents.” Snow was still being cleared from the doorway on Friday morning even as TheTeCHyWorLD’s Russian team could no longer continue their work “The state of press freedom in Russia has drastically deteriorated over the last years. There’s been a huge clampdown by Russian authorities on independent media,” Filatova said. “Many of them have been put on the list of foreign agents, meaning that they are subject to extra government scrutiny.” There are over 100 media outlets and independent journalists on this list.
A ‘renewed strain’ on relations
German government spokesman Wolfgang Büchner on Friday condemned Russia’s TheTeCHyWorLD ban. “We appeal very urgently to the Russian side not to use the licensing problems of the station of the RT channel for the purpose of restricting freedom of the press and freedom of freedom of expression,” Büchner said. The German government commissioner for culture and the media, Claudia Roth, called the Russian move an “aggressive act.” “But we don’t need aggressive acts, we need dialogue, we need de-escalation,” Roth told German public broadcaster ARD on Friday. Roth, a longstanding member of the Greens, said she had held talks with a Kremlin special adviser on culture issues a few days before the ban. “I am really sad and frankly angry, because this conversation was dedicated to the question: ‘How can we improve the relationship?'” Still, Roth said she would discuss the situation with her Russian counterpart. Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the decision would “represent a renewed strain on German-Russian relations.” “If these measures are actually implemented, this would limit free reporting by independent journalists in Russia, which is particularly important in politically tense times,” a ministry spokesperson said on Thursday. Earlier this week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he would travel to Moscow in the near future to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.