US social media giant Meta announced on Tuesday that it had imposed a ban on Russian government media outlets for allegedly trying to carry out influence operations.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Meta said in a press statement.

Meta accused Russian media outlets of using “deceptive tactics” to carry out influence operations on the US group’s social media platforms.

The move came just a few days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had announced new sanctions against RT, accusing it of being a “de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.

He told reporters that the Russian RT was part of a network of Russian-backed media outlets, which have sought to covertly “undermine democracy in the United States”.

Source: Kuwait News Agency