The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, has ordered an investigation into threats received by RT and Sputnik Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and her family from the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov* battalion.
Earlier in the day, Simonyan shared a letter she had received from the Azov Battalion on Telegram.
The letter says that for supporting Russia's military operation in Ukraine, Simonyan "is sentenced to death". It also mentions the way in which the Russian journalist and media manager as well as her three children should be killed.
In her post, Simonyan wrote: "What a style!" apparently referring to the official manner in which the letter was written and the fact that the names and cell phone numbers of the "judge," the "executioner," and their "assistants" were also mentioned in the text.
"Judging from the style of these threats, they were made by either maniacs or drugged teenagers. By the way, one thing does not exclude another. How should I react to them? I am living my life and I am doing what I think I should do," Simonyan told RIA Novosti.
In 2005, Margarita Simonyan launched Russia Today (RT), Russia's first round-the-clock English-language international TV news channel, which has since expanded into a global news network with platforms in six languages. In 2013, she also became editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya international news agency, which Sputnik is part of.
After Russia started its special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine in late February, RT and Sputnik faced a tough crackdown on their activities in the EU and the US for allegedly spreading "propaganda" about the operation. Moscow has repeatedly slammed the ban on RT and Sputnik's broadcasting and activity on social media as censorship and Western attempts to hide the truth about the military operation and the Ukraine crisis in general.
*Azov Battalion is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.