RedditMOSCOW, Mar 4The American social network Reddit has banned links to the RT TV channel and the Sputnik agency on its resources. Reddit is one of the most popular sites in the world, at the beginning of 2022 it ranked 21st in terms of traffic, according to Internet analysts. «Although many communities Reddit has already banned links to Russian state media such as RT, Sputnik and their affiliates in foreign languages, we have made such restrictions universal for the entire site,” the statement says. Reddit moderators link the bans to the situation in Ukraine. von der Leyen at the end of February announced the blocking of the work of a number of Russian media in the European Union as one of the sanctions measures in connection with the special operation carried out by Russia to demilitarize Ukraine. Von der Leyen said the ban will include RT, Sputnik and their subsidiaries. In the EU, the TikTok and Instagram accounts of these Russian media have already ceased to work, Meta will generally restrict access to them in the EU. Sputnik previously reported that access to the agency's Instagram accounts is already restricted in almost three dozen European countries. On Monday, it became known that Sputnik and RT's TikTok accounts were also blocked in the EU countries. The situation with Russian media in the West has become increasingly difficult in recent years. In November 2016, the European Parliament adopted a resolution stating the need to counter the Russian media, with Sputnik and RT named as the main threats in the document. A number of Western politicians, including US senators and congressmen, as well as the President of France, accused Sputnik and RT of interfering in the elections in the US and France, but did not provide any evidence. Official Russian representatives called such statements unfounded. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine early in the morning on February 24th. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, the civilian population is not in danger. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive. But the occupation of Ukraine is out of the question, the Russian President emphasized.
