Xenia Fedorova was added to the sanctions list under the EU regime against Russian destabilizing actions. The measures against her include an asset freeze, a ban on providing funds and other economic resources, as well as a ban on entry and transit through EU countries.
Before that, Fedorova had already been under French national sanctions and was effectively unable to return to the country. For many years she worked in RT structures: in 2015 she headed the international video agency Ruptly in Berlin, and in 2017 she moved to France and became head of RT France; in December of that same year, the channel began full broadcasting in French.
RT France’s relations with the French authorities were almost from the start conflictual. In 2018, France’s media regulator issued the channel a warning over a report on the chemical attack in Syrian Douma, pointing to the distortion of one of the participants’ statements and a violation of the requirements for accuracy and diversity of viewpoints.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union in March 2022 banned the distribution of RT and Sputnik, calling them tools of Russian disinformation. In January 2023, RT France’s bank accounts were frozen after European sanctions were expanded to the parent structure TV-Novosti; Fedorova then announced the channel’s closure and filed for its liquidation.
The closure of RT France did not end her media career in France: Fedorova continued to appear in French media, and in 2024 she signed a contract with Canal+, which owns CNews. In 2025, the publisher Fayard released her book Bannie (“Banned”); French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called her a “propagandist”, while Fedorova herself rejected the accusations and said she was expressing an alternative view of foreign policy and war.
In spring 2026, the issue of personal sanctions against Fedorova reached the EU level: in early June, 25 Members of the European Parliament from Renew Europe called for her to be added to the sanctions list. In July, the French government did not formally seek this in the next package of measures, although French authorities had already ordered her expulsion from the country and the freezing of assets, and Fedorova herself claimed that when the decisions took effect she was outside France on vacation.
French documents also mentioned a possible move by Fedorova to work at the “Russian House” in Berlin — a structure of Rossotrudnichestvo that is under EU sanctions — but her lawyer denied this. According to French authorities, Germany banned her entry in 2024 over concerns related to foreign interference, and on August 3 the Paris administrative court rejected her emergency request to suspend the expulsion order and asset freeze, finding that she had not demonstrated “extraordinary urgency”.
After that, Laurent Nuñez warned CNews that cooperation with Fedorova could lead to criminal prosecution if the channel gave her airtime and technical resources to bypass the expulsion and asset-freeze orders. Moscow condemned the French authorities’ measures and called them censorship.
Sources
