The Government Approves Termination of the Agreements on Creation and Activity of the MIR Interstate TV Channel

The Government of the Republic of Moldova approved denunciation of the agreements with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) on creation and activity of the MIR interstate TV and radio company. This decision was made on Wednesday, April 19.

According to the decision, it concerns denunciation of the Agreement on creation of the Interstate Teleradio Company signed in Bishkek in 1992 and the Agreement on the guarantees of international law for the free and independent activity of the MIR Television and Radio Company signed in Ashgabat in 1993. In this context, the representation of the MIR Television and Radio Company in the Republic of Moldova is to be de-registered as a legal entity in the registers of the State Registration Chamber, the Government specifies.

“Denunciation of our country’s participation in the activity of the MIR Company will contribute to saving financial resources and reaffirm the commitment of the Republic of Moldova to protect the national and regional broadcasting space for ensuring informational security,” Artur Mija, Secretary General of the Government, emphasized.

The decision was made after, on April 4, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the list of international and regional organizations to which the Republic of Moldova was supposed to pay membership quotas and debts from the 2023 state budget, and the contributions to the MIR interstate television were excluded. “The Republic of Moldova will spend zero lei from its taxpayers’ money for propaganda and disinformation,” Daniel Vodă, the spokesperson of the Government, declared after the meeting of the executive authority held on that day.

Currently, the Mir TV and Mir 24 channels common for the CIS area do not have broadcasting licenses issued by the Broadcasting Council and, consequently, are not considered to be media service providers in the Republic of Moldova.

In March 2022, in an analysis for Mediacritica, Viorica Zaharia, President of the Press Council, emphasized that “MIR, the TV channel with the command center in Russia, not merely spreads propaganda, but also uses another dangerous form of distortion of reality – falsification of reality by means of omission. It is about omitting facts, fragmentation of information, and entirely eliminating relevant people and institutions from the news – in other words, a combination of actions which present the world differently from the way it actually is.”