Germany Orders Shut Down of Berlin Edition of Russian State Television

The hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia has led to the closure of the Berlin office of Russian state television Channel One. Without explanation, two Russian correspondents from Berlin, Ivan Blagoy and Dmitry Volkov, who are regularly accredited to the German Foreign Ministry, were ordered to leave Germany within two weeks.

A special response from Moscow was not long in coming: the Russian Foreign Ministry expelled two German journalists of the ARD TV channel from the country. Diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the expelled journalists were ARD Moscow correspondents Frank Aischmann and Sven Feller. Zakharova specified that “the Russian government could consider the possibility of accrediting new ARD journalists after the opening of the bureau of Russian state television Channel One in Berlin.”

For his part, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov (pictured) said that the time for negotiations is not over, but now we must resort to the most decisive means to make sure that the Kremlin’s viewpoint is heard. “We do not believe that the time for political and diplomatic discussions and signals has passed, but they have become an important stronger means of delivering our viewpoint,” Ryabkov said in an interview commenting on the recent launch of a ballistic missile called Oreshnik (“Nutwood”), which nearly leveled one of the major factories of the Ukrainian defense industry, Yuzhmash. The Russian deputy minister reiterated that the West is “deluding itself” into thinking it can lead Russia to a strategic defeat. “A nuclear-armed state cannot be defeated, we have enough tools to respond militarily to this growing spiral of confrontation,” Ryabkov emphasized.