Sputnik closes Nordic language services

Through short messages on Twitter, Sputnik revealed that its information websites in Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish are closed, and that “Sputnik now only provides English language service in your region.”

Sputnik launched its websites in Nordic languages in April 2015.

Sputnik is an international multimedia service launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency wholly owned and operated by the Russian government. Sputnik replaced Voice of Russia and the English version of RIA Novosti, and is meant to be an alternative to “Western propaganda”.

Head of Rossiya Segodnya, Dmitry Kiselyov, is on EU’s list of individuals sanctioned during the Ukrainian crisis for being a “central figure of the government propaganda supporting the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine”.

Sputnik still runs websites in Abkhazian, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belorussian, Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, Dari, English, Estonian, French, Georgian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Moldavian, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Tajik, Turkish, Uzbek and Vietnamese.