“Fake news” can be harmful, but freedom of expression and access to information is the best way to defeat Putin’s propaganda.
The European Union in early March banned Russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik from broadcasting, as a response to the nefarious pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda dominating those outlets’ coverage of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The ban also requires search engines like Google to delist all search results from Sputnik and RT, and an obligation for social media companies to block their accounts—as well as deleting the sharing and reproduction of RT and Sputnik content by other users.