Moscow is fuming after at the start of this week several Russian state media outlets were blocked for EU-based users of the messaging app Telegram. Starting Sunday the channels of RIA Novosti, Rossiya 1, Channel One, NTV, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta were inaccessible in the European Union. Kremlin officials slammed the “act of censorship” – with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova describing “the systematic cleansing of all undesirable sources of information from the information space” as ongoing in the West. She further condemned the “constant campaign of repression against Russian media in nearly all European Union countries,” adding that “these attacks and similar ones against our media will not go unanswered.” “We reserve the right to respond in the same manner,” she said, but without specifying what form the retaliation will take. The EU had already since the Ukraine war’s start cracked down on the major Russian state television international networks. More recently the EU moved against RIA Novosti, Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, accusing the outlets of spreading propaganda on behalf of the Kremlin. It remains unclear the degree to which Telegram and EU authorities are acting in coordination on this: The messaging app Telegram has blocked access to channels belonging to major Russian state-owned news outlets across […]