Russian News Service RT to Go Off the Air in the Washington Area

Russia’s English-language broadcasting network RT, described by U.S. intelligence agencies as part of Moscow’s “state-run propaganda machine,” will disappear from television screens in the nation’s capital at midnight Sunday.

That’s when WNVT and WNVC, a pair of digital stations in northern Virginia that carry about a dozen foreign news services including RT, will go off the air. It’s a year to the day since the station’s owner auctioned off its share of the airwaves for use by developers of wireless applications.

RT will also disappear from local cable systems, which are required by federal law to carry all broadcasters in their area. Attention turned to RT’s broadcasts as intelligence agencies probed separate Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor in chief, wrote in an email that RT would continue to work with distribution partners in the nation’s capital and beyond. She added that the Justice Department, which required RT’s U.S. production company to register with it under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, had made that more difficult.

“The registration in fact has placed undue burden on multiple areas of RT operations, and pressure on our partners as well,” Belkina said in an email.

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