Head of RT television on the list of persons subject to EU sanctions. Who is Margarita Simonyan, called the Tsarina of propaganda?

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As reported by the EU Council, Margarita Simonyan is one of the central figures of government propaganda. The editor-in-chief of the English-language news television RT (Russia Today) promoted a positive attitude towards the annexation of Crimea and the actions of separatists in Donbas.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Margarita Simonyan covered by EU sanctions

Simonyan was born on April 6, 1980 in the Russian city of Krasnodar, in a poor Armenian family. After graduating from school, she began studying journalism at the Kuban State University, during which she began working for the local TV station in Krasnodar. In 1996, she went to Bristol for a student exchange, financed by the US State Department, and three years later she went to Chechnya, from where she reported on the second Chechen war, for which she was awarded the award for “professional courage”.

Then, in 2002, Simonyan became the regional correspondent of the Russian TV channel Rossija, for which she reported, among others, terrorist attack on a school in Beslan in 2004. After which she moved to Moscow and joined the Russian team of Kremlin reporters.

When in 2005 she became the editor-in-chief of RT, she was only 25 years old, which was widely commented on in the local media. Simonyan, as the editor-in-chief of the new television, has repeatedly stated that its goal is to create an independent news channel out of RT, similar to the BBC or CNN. She also emphasized that the government will not dictate the information that appears there, and that “government censorship is constitutionally prohibited”. In reality, however, RT was repeatedly criticized for its bias, and Simonyan herself came to be called the Tsarina of Russian propaganda. The journalist argued, however, that RT “makes no secret of the fact that it is a Russian station and obviously sees the world from the Russian point of view.”

In May 2016, the then President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, imposed sanctions on her, forbidding her from entering the country, and in February 2022 she was in turn subject to sanctions by the EU Council.