Meta bans Russia’s RT from Facebook, Instagram for ‘foreign interference’

The ban comes days after the U.S. government announced sanctions against the state-owned TV channel and its related entities, accusing them of carrying out covert influence operations aimed at interfering in foreign elections, including recent Moldovan elections.

Meta accused RT and its affiliated channels of “foreign interference activity," and said Russia attempts to use social media to covertly manipulate public opinion.

RT’s pages on Facebook and Instagram were inaccessible from the U.S. early Tuesday. Cached versions of those pages on the Google search engine had more than 7.3 million and 1.1 million followers respectively. Meta said the full ban would roll out globally over the coming days.

RT didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Earlier this month, the U.S. also announced charges against two Russian nationals employed by RT, accusing them of conspiring to send nearly $10 million to a U.S.-based online media company to inject hidden Russian government messaging across social media.

The Biden administration has accused the Kremlin of running a campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election by targeting voters with covert political propaganda and disinformation.

Meta’s decision to ban RT, along with U.S. sanctions, expand a crackdown on Kremlin media outlets that began shortly after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At the time, TV distributors such as DirecTV and Roku removed RT from their lineups.

In Europe, officials imposed far-reaching sanctions that cut off RT channels across the bloc. Those measures have since then forced social-media companies including Meta and X to block access to RT’s social-media accounts from Europe.

Meta said it had since then also globally blocked RT and other Russian state-controlled media outlets from running ads, and had downranked their content in users’ feeds.

Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com