The EU’s efforts to block access to Russia’s state-affiliated media have largely failed, Bloomberg admitted
The European Union’s sanctions aimed at restricting access to Russian state-backed media outlets have not been very effective, an article by Bloomberg acknowledged on Thursday.
“The Kremlin appears to have the last laugh,” and such media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, remain readily available within the bloc through a system of mirror websites, the article reads.
“We spit on your sanctions,” RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on the matter in remarks relayed by her press office to Bloomberg.
RT has been using at least 19 mirror sites to provide access to its content to its EU audience, according to Bloomberg’s estimates. Its main domain, RT.com, was blocked in the bloc shortly after the conflict between Moscow and Kiev broke out in February 2022.
One of the mirrors, namely swentr.site (i.e ‘RT News’ mirrored), received nearly 3 million hits in October alone, Bloomberg noted, citing data traffic counter Semrush. The main domain, despite being blocked in multiple markets, still garnered a massive 141 million hits over the same period, it added.
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