American multinational pay television network, Discovery has suspended its operations in Russia amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. As per Variety, from now, 15 channels that operate through the media alliance, a joint venture with Russia’s National Media Group, will go off air. The TV company’s network includes such channels as Animal Planet, Animal Planet HD, Discovery Channel, Discovery Science, Eurosport 1, Eurosport 2.
A spokesperson from Discovery told Variety that the channel has decided to suspend the broadcast of its channels and services in Russia.
Not only Discovery, CNN also turns its back on Russia
This is not the first time that Russia is facing the wrath of such a big media company as earlier CNN, which operates through the same joint venture, also turned its back on the country. CNN stopped broadcasting from within Russia which came after a new media law was passed last week. The law criminalizes the publication of “false information” about Russia’s military. The new censorship law states that if any journalist calls the conflict a ‘war’ then he/she could be prosecuted and sentenced to prison. Soon after this, BBC also suspended its operations in Russia, however, it again resumed reporting in Russia on Tuesday.
Netflix suspends its services in Russia
Recently, one of the top streaming platforms, Netflix, had also suspended its services in Russia in the wake of its war against Ukraine. A spokesperson confirmed the move to Politico that the decision was taken due to the “circumstances on the ground”. This means that residents of Russia will no longer be able to sign up for a new account, but the current Russian subscribers will have access to their accounts only until the end of their current billing cycle. After this, their accounts would be temporarily suspended until the situation in Ukraine improves. Notably, it lies in Netflix’s decretion whether to restart the services then or not.
Earlier, Netflix had also…