"The Assembly considers that the systematic destruction of independent media in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation – the forced closure or seizure of Ukrainian media outlets, the replacement of Ukrainian broadcasting with Russian State propaganda and the persecution of local journalists – constitutes the most extreme form of media capture on the European continent today and a deliberately engineered ‘news desert’. The same model has been fully implemented in the Russian Federation and in Belarus. The Assembly further notes that media pluralism in member States is under attack from outside through foreign information manipulation and interference, in particular by the Russian Federation, which uses State-controlled media, covert ownership and financing of media outlets and co-ordinated online campaigns to polarise societies and weaken support for Ukraine. It welcomes the measures taken by the European Union and member States to suspend the broadcasting of Kremlin-linked propaganda networks and stresses that such measures, taken in accordance with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, are a legitimate defence of media pluralism and not a restriction of it."