RT - Russia Today Live

RT is a Russian state-funded news television channel dedicated to international news coverage. Operating both pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside Russia, as well as offering online content in Russian, English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic, it delivers information across a range of media formats worldwide.

RT stands for TV-Novosti - self-declared as an "autonomous non-profit organization" or ANO - established by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005. As part of its response to the economic crisis in December 2008, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin included ANO "TV-Novosti" among his list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia. RT operates as a multilingual service with five channels in five languages: its original English channel debuted in 2005; Arabic in 2007, Spanish 2009, German 2014 and French 2017. American (2010-2022), UK (2022-2022) and other regional channels also produce local content; Ruptly video agency owns Redfish video channel and Maffick digital media company as subsidiaries under its ownership.

RT has frequently been described as a major propagandistic outlet for Russia and its foreign policy, drawing heavy criticism from academics, fact-checkers and news reporters (including current and former reporters from RT). Academics, fact-checkers and news reporters ( including some current and former reporters from RT) have identified it as disinformation and conspiracy theory propagators. UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached impartiality rules numerous times including broadcasting "materially misleading" material.

Margarita Simonyan compared RT America to Russia's Ministry of Defence during their 2012 interview on CNN about the Russo-Georgian War and stated they were conducting an information war with Western nations such as America. As a result of these statements in September 2017, RT America was ordered by US Department of Justice to register under Foreign Agent Registration Act as a foreign agent.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, RT was banned in Ukraine; Latvia and Lithuania also adopted similar bans; Germany banned RT DE in February 2022; During Russia's invasion of Ukraine, European Union and Canada formalised RT's ban and several independent service providers suspended broadcasts for over 10 countries; social media websites blocked external links to RT websites while restricting content access; Microsoft removed RT from their app store as well as de-ranking their search results while Apple removed their RT app altogether except in Russia.