Latvia’s intelligence services arrested a Latvian national last Tuesday under EU sanctions on suspicion of “providing economic resources to Kremlin propaganda”, the state’s security service announced in a statement. Thursday,
baltic news outlet Delphi The suspect has been identified as Marat Kasem, editor-in-chief of the Lithuanian edition of the Kremlin-backed news website Sputnik. He has been put under house arrest.
Both Sputnik and Russia Today (also known as RT) have since been banned from the EU. last March After spreading misinformation about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The ban extends to all platforms and the two outlets’ content can no longer be accessed from inside the EU.
“Person employed in one of the information resources of the agency” Rossiya Segodnya ” [Russia Today]which is under the control of the Kremlin and disseminates narratives tailored to the interests of the Kremlin, including regularly defaming Latvia and its allies,” the Latvian agency’s statement reads.
RT CEO Dmitry Kiselev told Russian state-run agency RIA said the arrests were “clearly political persecution, completely illegal, absurd and baseless.”