Is Russia Today finished?

As the British authorities debate whether to ban the propaganda channel of a savage imperialist power, Russia Today is making a decent first of banning itself. Workers have been walking out for a week. The invasion was too much even for staffers who had spent years demeaning themselves by licking the boots of a dictatorship.

Even if Sky and YouTube had not effectively closed the channel by pulling it from their platforms, RT would have faced extreme difficulty in continuing to broadcast from London, one ex-staffer told me. About half his former colleagues had quit, including large numbers of production staff the Russians needed to keep the channel on air.

One had a Ukrainian family and was sick at the slaughter his paymasters had unleashed on his relatives. Others were British workers, who had joined because they were lost in conspiracy theory, or had fallen for the old lie that all journalism was propaganda so where was the harm in working for Russia? That or they enjoyed the transgressive thrill of lying for money and lying about the Syrians their masters murdered.