The anchor of an English language Russian news station today criticised the country's military action in Ukraine live on air.
RT, previously known as Russia Today, is an international, Russian-based TV network broadcasting in about 100 countries. The station was said to have taken a biased stance towards Russia when members of the country's armed forces entered Crimea by using headlines such as "Russia forced to act".
Anchor Abby Martin this morning said she was strongly against military intervention in other countries. “Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence and I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in sovereign nations’ affairs. What Russia did is wrong.”
Speaking at the end of Breaking Set, a programme which apparently “cuts through the pre-written narrative that tries to tell you what to think, and what to care about”, Ms Martin said she “will not sit here and apologise or defend military aggression”.
She went on to complain about general media coverage of the situation: “the coverage I’ve seen of Ukraine has been truly disappointing from all sides of the media spectrum, and ripe with disinformation.”
Ms Martin, who is from Washington DC, added that she would continue to bring “the truth as I see it” to RT viewers.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s leaders have vowed to repel Russia’s military intervention in Crimea, as Moscow’s troops continued to besiege military bases across the Black Sea peninsula.
Ukraine’s former president Leonid Kuchma, who is from eastern Ukraine, urged people there to show loyalty to Kiev. “Ukraine is our motherland. We have no other,” he said. “God and the truth are on our side.”