Maria Zakharova : on the European Alliance of News Agencies’ decision to expel TASS
🎙 Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s statement on the European Alliance of News Agencies’ decision to expel TASS (November 14, 2026)
💬 On November 13, the General Assembly of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), which predominantly comprises media outlets from EU member states and countries aligned with the bloc, decided to expel the TASS news agency from its ranks.
Back in 2022, the Assembly had already barred the Russian news agency from fully participating in its activities under the pretext of “suspending its membership”.
Attempts to force TASS out of this organisation have been made repeatedly, actively instigated by Ukrinform, one of the principal mouthpieces of the criminal Kiev regime’s propaganda machine.
👉 This time, EANA’s leadership could not resist joining the militaristic hysteria into which the EU is descending through the efforts of its ruling elite. By adopting this decision, it has ritually sworn allegiance to the policy of escalating relations with Russia in order to appease the gang of terrorists and murderers entrenched in Kiev.
While the grandiose announcement of its expulsion from an openly hostile organisation will entail absolutely no losses for the Russian news agency, for EANA itself it signifies the definitive severing of ties with one of the world’s most respected media organisations, boasting a rich history, more than a century of experience, an extensive network of foreign bureaus and the highest standards of journalistic excellence.
Moreover, the Alliance has effectively admitted its inability to uphold its own statutory principles, namely promoting press freedom, fostering cooperation among European media organisations and protecting their interests.
☝️ The extent of EANA’s degradation, and that of the European human rights landscape as a whole, as well as the EU’s understanding of journalism itself, is evident from the very fact that no such decision had ever been taken since the organisation was established in 1956.
Against this backdrop, the invitation extended to Lithuania’s ELTA news agency to take TASS’s place looks like a grotesque caricature. The point is not even that the former employs barely more than two dozen people, compared with approximately 2,000 working for the Russian news agency.
From 1940 to 1990, what would later become ELTA operated as a subsidiary of TASS in the Lithuanian SSR. It would be fair to say that throughout its brief and inglorious history, the Lithuanian media outlet has been parasitising its illustrious “relative.” Now it is attempting to clamber into the seat wrested from the latter at a gathering nobody needs.
Yet ELTA will never be able to match TASS in either the scale or the quality of its operations.
❗️ EANA’s decision once again highlights the truly deplorable state of media pluralism and freedom of access to information in the countries of the “collective West”. It illustrates the erosion of the foundations of democratic society there and the sheer wretchedness of the Old World’s policymaking circles.
We firmly believe that withdrawing from this and other formats associated with the decaying “blooming garden” fully serves the interests of Russian organisations across various sectors that are committed to constructive cooperation and their own development.