Dodon wants to return Rossiya24 to the Moldovans
The media market of Moldova needs to be completely liberalized and the broadcast of Russian channels should be returned in full. President of Moldova Igor Dodon stated this on air on the RTR Moldova TV channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Everyone should be on equal terms. All restrictions must be lifted. Let the TV viewer choose what he wants to watch: Rossiya24 or CNN. Let's see if we can do it in the current format, but we will strive for it. If we find the strength within the coalition to solve this, this must be done. This applies not only to Russian channels, the right also has problems,” Dodon said.
He neither confirmed nor denied the information that the right to broadcast programs on the Russian First Channel passed from a company owned by oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, who fled the country, to a company close to Dodon himself.
“I know that last year or the year before in Russia there was a question of taking away the rebroadcast of Channel One from Plahotniuc. We know what is happening there with this rebroadcast: they take good Russian content, programs that people love and watch, and at the same time they put on their own news, in which they bomb the same Russia. It has been discussed more than once in Moscow that this needs to be sorted out somehow. Whether they decided or not at this stage, I don’t know, I don’t know,” Dodon said.
Earlier, Moldovan media reported that the right to broadcast the Russian Channel One in Moldova transferred from August 1 from the Prime company, owned by Vlad Plahotniuc, to Accent TV, which is associated with Dodon.
On February 12, 2018, a law amending the Code on Television and Radio came into force in Moldova. In accordance with this document, on the territory of the Republic of Moldova it is prohibited to broadcast information-analytical, news and military broadcasts of television channels belonging to countries that have allegedly not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. Russian TV channels fell under this restriction.
Igor Dodon then refused to sign the law, but the decision of the pro-Western parliament still came into force. Dodon promised to return to consideration of this issue in the new parliament. However, his temporary ally, Prime Minister Maia Sandu, believes that Moldova must continue to “fight Russian propaganda.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.