A petition calling for the European Union to sanction the transmission of NTV-Plus and Tricolor on Eutelsat has been signed by the entire National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine.
The petition, drawn up by the Denis Diderot Committee (named after the French philosopher, art critic, and writer), wants to prevent NTV-Plus and Tricolor from using European satellites. The two platforms are currently distributed from Eutelsat at 36 degrees East. It’s estimated the satellite represents up to 30% of their installed base.
Following reporting restrictions imposed by the Russian government at the beginning of March NTV-Plus (part of Gazprom-Media Holding) and Tricolor have excluded all international news channels from their offering including BBC World News, CNN, Deutsche Welle (DW), Euronews (in Russian), France 24, NHK World, RAI News 24 and TV5 Monde.
“The two Russian operators claim that the switch-off of the international news channels was at the initiative of the broadcasters, which is clearly untrue. The EU and Eutelsat IGO cannot accept this censorship using European satellite capacities and neither the continued transmission on Eutelsat transponders of RT News, the Kremlin war propaganda channel, banned by an EU decision one month ago,” said Denis Diderot Committee coordinator, Dr Andre Lange.
