RT caves to Justice Department threats, registers as a 'foreign agent'

Russia's state-funded English-language news agency RT self-reported its registration as a "foreign agent" in the United States on Monday. "Between legal action and registration [as a foreign agent], we have chosen the latter," tweeted RT's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, citing a Nov. 13 deadline imposed by the Justice Department.

In October, Twitter announced its decision to immediately end advertising from accounts owned by the Russian state-sponsored news agency Sputnik, in addition to RT. "This decision was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government," Twitter wrote in its statement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that if the U.S. took action against Russia's media, it would respond tit-for-tat. "An attack on our media in the U.S. is an attack on the freedom of speech beyond all doubt," Putin said. CNN and the U.S. government-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty could be potential targets in a retaliation, Reuters reports.