WIREDGOV

Democracies need to fight back against harmful disinformation. Sanctions can be a useful tool to counter malign operations – if enforced correctly.

Tackling Russia’s continued attempts to undermine Western democracies requires resilience against disinformation. Russian propaganda has been targeting Western countries by aiming to discredit events such as the Paris Olympics and influence electoral processes, including those of Romania and Moldova, as a recent discussion at RUSI’s Centre for Finance and Security highlighted.

The EU sanctions against the Kremlin’s war propaganda show that democracies do have the tools to defend themselves. The European External Action Service recently published its Third Report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Threats (FIMI), which also highlights sanctions as part of the EU’s toolbox to combat disinformation.

While sanctions against disinformation remain a contentious issue from a freedom of speech perspective, they can be used as legitimate tools to counter harmful propaganda – but implementation and enforcement, as well as a lack of similar tools against domestic disinformation, remain key challenges.

An Expanding List of Sanctioned Propaganda Channels

From the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the EU has imposed a raft of economic and trade sanctions against Russia. However, the EU also introduced new measures against Russian war propaganda in the third sanctions package on 1 March 2022. The swift adoption of these measures underlined the Council of the EU’s political will to step up efforts against foreign disinformation.

The initial sanctions targeted the English, French, German, and Spanish-language editions of Russian news outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik. Later, the list was expanded by subsequent sanctions packages, and now encompasses 32 outlets, including the news agency RIA Novosti, TV channels Rossiya 24 and Rossiya 1, and the Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Izvestia newspapers. Despite the expanding list, not all Russian channels and media outlets are sanctioned. Several remain fully accessible in the EU, including the state-owned news agency TASS and the daily newspapers Kommersant and Vedomosti.

However, certain member states, including Lithuania and Estonia went beyond the scope of EU sanctions and banned Russian media outlets that are not listed by the Council Regulation. Elsewhere, European Free Trade Association members Norway and Switzerland, while aligning with virtually all EU sanctions against Russia, decided not to adopt the sanctions on disinformation outlets.

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