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Russia’s Channel 1 has said its staff have been told to leave Berlin
The German government has ordered the closure of the Russian public broadcaster Channel 1’s bureau in Berlin and told its staff to leave the country by early December.
According to the broadcaster, correspondent Ivan Blagoy and cameraman Dmitry Volkov received official notification on Tuesday that they would be expelled, with German authorities citing national security concerns.
The move, which comes amid rising tensions between Europe’s two most powerful states, has sparked outrage, with the network calling it the latest attempt to silence independent reporting in the EU.
“The activities of Channel One pose a threat to public order and security in Germany and the EU,” the authorities reportedly stated, adding that the network’s content continues to influence Russian-speaking audiences in Germany despite its website being blocked.
Channel One, which is funded by the Russian government, has long been accused in the West of spreading pro-Kremlin narratives. The expulsion of its journalists follows a report by Blagoy on the detention of German citizen Nikolai Gaiduk, arrested by Russian security services on suspicion of espionage. Gaiduk, according to Russian officials, was involved in a plot by Ukrainian intelligence to sabotage gas facilities in the Kaliningrad region.
Moscow quickly responded to the German decision, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warning that retaliatory measures would be announced shortly. “We will not leave this without a response,” she told TASS.
The Russian broadcaster cited a document it received from the German authorities, which reportedly stated that “the activities of Channel One represent a significant immediate threat to public order and security in Germany and the EU as they pose a threat to the process of the formation of the public opinion and decision-making in the member states.”
The document also said that despite the Russian TV station’s website being blocked in Germany, its content “is still available on the Internet, is distributed via Telegram channels and continues to influence the Russian-speaking population of Germany.”
“Russian media has promoted the decline of the West and the economic collapse of Europe. This narrative and other far-right narratives have taken root among many Russian speakers, causing mistrust of the structures of the German state, the EU, and influencing far-right groups in Germany,” the document added, as cited by Channel One.
The expulsion of Channel 1’s journalists is the latest in a series of actions taken by Western European governments against Russian media outlets since Moscow’s military offensive against Ukraine in 2022. In March of that year, most Russian news sources were banned in the EU, including RT and Sputnik.
“We were simply doing our job by reporting on the events in Ukraine, and now we are being punished for it,” Blagoy said. “This is not just an attack on Channel One; it’s an attack on the freedom of the press itself.”
In late September, a couple from the German city of Karlsruhe was arrested on suspicion of broadcasting RT and other Russian TV channels via the internet. They may face at least one year in prison if found guilty of violating the Foreign Trade Act.
