Russia’s RT television network has been fined £200,000 by Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, for its coverage of the Salisbury poisonings in 2018. RT, which is funded by the Russian government, was accused of failing to preserve due impartiality and has also been ordered to broadcast a summary of Ofcom’s findings to its viewers. RT rejected Ofcom’s decision and has been granted a full judicial review, which is expected later this year. “Taken together, these breaches represented serious and repeated failures of compliance with our rules. We were particularly concerned by the frequency of RT’s rule-breaking over a relatively short period of time,” said Ofcom. “We consider this sanction to be appropriate and proportionate. It takes into account the additional steps that RT has taken to ensure its compliance since we launched our investigations; and that we have not recorded any further breaches of our due impartiality rules against RT to date,” it added. In response, RT said the penalties were “inappropriate and disproportionate” compared to previous Ofcom rulings and believes its findings were “wrong” and “reached in a manner contrary to the law.” “It is notable that cases that involved hate speech and incitement to violence have been subject to substantially lower fines,” RT said. “It is astonishing that, in contrast, Ofcom sees RT’s programmes – which it thought should have presented more alternative points of view – as worthy of a greater penalty than programmes containing hate speech and incitement to violence,” it added. The programmes typically centred around major matters of political controversy such as the Syrian conflict and the Salisbury suspected chemical weapon attack. The UK government has accused Russian intelligence officials of poisoning Sergei Skripal, a former double agent for Britain, and his daughter Yulia in March 2018 in Salisbury, UK. Both survived but in June 2018 a woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after coming into contact with the disposed nerve agent. Russia has long rejected accusations it was behind the poisoning despite an investigation that pointed the finger at Russian agents. It saw relations between London and Moscow arguably fall to their worst since the Cold War. Moscow has also been slammed for its support of Syrian leader Bashir Al Assad. The latter has repeatedly been accused of using chemical weapons on protestors and rebels during the Syrian Civil War, claims Russia has rejected. RT has been criticised in some corners for broadcasting programmes that say the attacks are hoaxes.