The RT TV channel announced its intention to file a lawsuit against the Bild tabloid because of an article that said that employees of the German branch of RT were forced to spy on politician Alexei Navalny .

Bild material under the heading “I had to follow Navalny” was published on March 9. It tells the story of an employee of the German RT, Daniel Lange: according to him, he broke the contract with RT after he was asked to “spy” on Navalny when he was being treated at the Berlin clinic “Charite”. 

As Lange said, he was added to a secret chat with the leadership of the German RT service and asked to fulfill a certain “special order.” He and his colleague had to get into the clinic unnoticed under the guise of patients, and then find out where the ward in which Navalny lies, and how close you can get to him.

According to Lange, after some time he realized that his task was not to shoot exclusive shots and get ahead of competitors, but to find weak points in the protection of the clinic. Then he specially attracted the attention of the staff – they rewrote the data on the place of work, after which the RT management canceled the task and offered to follow Navalny’s associates Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh.

In a  report on the preparation of a lawsuit against the tabloid, RT hinted that the publication in Bild could be part of a campaign against the TV channel in Germany. RT noted that recently its German edition received a notification about the closure of an account with Commerzbank. The TV channel stressed that 15% of the bank’s shares belong to the German state.

On March 8, Lange published the book “RT Deutsch Inside: Putins Medienarmee in Deutschland” , in which he talks about his two-year experience of working on the TV channel. Among other things, the book also contains a story about the surveillance of Navalny. 

(C)MEDUZA 2021