The account has been accused of “impersonation” and breaking the platform’s rules
Social media platform X has suspended the English-language account belonging to RT’s India branch. The suspension notice sent to RT India on Tuesday stated that the account had allegedly violated the platform’s rules.
According to a statement posted on RT’s main X account, RT India has been accused of unlawfully “impersonating” RT, a claim the channel has denied. The post was accompanied by a screenshot of the suspension notice, in which X accused RT India of “violating X rules against inauthentic accounts” and informed the branch that it “may not misappropriate the identity of individuals, groups, or organizations or use a fake identity to deceive others.”
The channel criticized the platform for the suspension, confirming that “our sister channel @RT_India_news… are very much not impersonating anyone” and expressing hope the situation is “a simple misunderstanding.” In a later post, RT announced that “sadly, we have not yet got a response to rectify this obviously unjust situation with RT India” from X moderators and asked the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, to intervene.
Sadly, we have not yet got a response to rectify this obviously unjust situation with RT India
Hold every hope that X now operates in good faith: that this was an honest mistake, and the era of bans under absurd pretexts is forever behind us https://t.co/0i7ItRxFYb
“We hold every hope that X now operates in good faith: that this was an honest mistake, and the era of bans under absurd pretexts is forever behind us,” the channel stated.
RT has faced pressure from the West for years. Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, many major Western broadcasters stopped airing RT channels. The EU placed a comprehensive ban on the channel and imposed sanctions on ANO TV-Novosti, RT’s parent organization. The UK, France, and Germany froze the accounts of RT’s branches in their countries and closed their bureaus. RT’s online presence also suffered, with Google blocking RT sites from recommended services, YouTube removing RT accounts, and TikTok and Telegram blocking them across the EU, US, and Canada.
The pressure on the channel intensified further last year, when the US imposed sweeping sanctions against RT, its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, and several top executives, branding the channel a tool of Russian government propaganda. The US State Department has accused RT of playing a major role in eroding support for Ukraine around the world.
Following sanctions, Meta – which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – banned RT and other Russian state-linked media outlets from its apps globally over what the company called “foreign interference activity.”
RT has taken the crackdown in its stride, and editor-in-chief Simonyan has pledged that the channel will “find ways to bypass” sanctions and bans. The outlet recently launched its new RT Balkan TV Channel, which started broadcasting from Belgrade in December last year.
