The Ministry of the Interior confirmed on Wednesday, July 29, that a ministerial deportation order had been served on Ms. Xenia Fedorova. According to the document cited by Libération, her behavior undermines the fundamental interests of the state, and her presence on French soil constitutes "a particularly serious and current threat to public order." The order states that by disseminating her narratives, she is acting as "a conduit for disinformation campaigns orchestrated by the Russian authorities." Her lawyer has announced an appeal. The administrative court will decide the case.

As for us, we welcome a decision that is democratically sound.

It is not an opinion that is being targeted, but a position. We have supported it tirelessly, and that is what the ruling focuses on. Everyone in France remains free to believe that NATO bears responsibility for the war, that the Maidan uprising was a coup d'état, or that Ukraine bombed civilians in the Donbas for eight years. However abhorrent or false these opinions may be, they can be freely expressed. But Ms. Fedorova is not an ordinary resident. For five years, she headed RT France, an organization that the European Council deemed on March 1, 2022, to be a channel for concerted propaganda in support of aggression, under the control of Russian leaders—a decision upheld by the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 27, 2022, in accordance with international law. She continued in the same role at the Bolloré Group's stations, without a press card. Freedom of the press protects journalists. It was never intended to cover the activity, on our soil, of a foreign state apparatus that is waging a war of aggression in Europe and threatening our country.

This decision protects our presidential election and our democratic life. The timing is significant. On May 26, the Kremlin's chief propagandist, Margarita Simonyan, the very same person who sent Fedorova on a mission to Paris, declared she was fighting all of Europe. A few days later, while two presidential candidates were traveling to Kyiv to affirm France's support for Ukraine, Ms. Fedorova countered them from a Parisian television studio with Moscow's line. Attacking French candidates in the midst of their campaigns and in the name of an aggressor state is no longer an opinion on the war; it is interference in our electoral debate. A presidential election is not a theater of operations. By excluding the most vulnerable instrument of Russian cognitive warfare, France is establishing a simple principle: the deliberation of the French people belongs to them.

This decision owes much to civil society and independent journalism. On April 12, 2025, at the Paris Book Festival, we, at the initiative of several associations, disrupted the book signing organized by Fayard as part of an event funded by various public bodies. We wrote at the time: it is high time she was expelled; what is the government waiting for? On June 3, 2026, eleven organizations demonstrated in Paris against the Kremlin's war propaganda in our media and filed complaints with Arcom, the government, and the Minister of the Interior. Investigations by Le Monde and Mediapart established the extent of her influence within the Bolloré network and the conditions surrounding the renewal of her residency permit in 2024.

Finally, on June 21, 2026, Desk Russia published a crucial investigation by Yuri Izotov, a Russian journalist living in exile in France: according to Russian administrative data examined by the media outlet, Ms. Fedorova remained on the payroll of TV Novosti, RT's parent company, until August 31, 2024—more than two and a half years after RT was banned in the European Union—and received substantial compensation at the very moment her entry into the French media landscape was being negotiated. The fact that Russian journalists in exile had to shed light on what our institutions had failed to see speaks volumes. They deserve our gratitude.

Nothing is finished. One person leaves; the system remains. We ask:

• to the European Union, the inclusion of Ms. Fedorova on the list of persons sanctioned under Regulation (EU) 2024/2642, from which she has so far been excluded, even though the European Parliament voted in favor of this in mid-June;

• to Arcom, that it draw the necessary conclusions from this decree and immediately monitor the integrity of information and pluralism on the channels that have opened their platforms to the propaganda of a state at war with Europe, and that it act more swiftly with internet operators to ensure that they comply with European sanctions against Russian media outlets practicing war propaganda

• to the government, transparency on the conditions for renewing the residence permit in 2024, and verification of the obligations to declare to the register of foreign interest representatives of the HATVP;

• To the leaders of the Bolloré Group, they must cease invoking freedom of expression to cover up the employment of former executives of a state-owned media outlet banned by the European Union and to open their broadcasting channels to enemies of our country. Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which they cite on the very day of the decree, has never granted a foreign state at war with Europe the right to have a French broadcasting station.

Let us finally stop confusing freedom of expression, which protects citizens against the state, with the supposed right of a foreign power to turn our media against our democracy and diplomacy. What we have achieved today is not a victory against a woman. It is a first act of clarity from a country that is beginning to recognize the information war being waged against it.

On April 12, 2025, at the Grand Palais, we handed Ms. Fedorova a red-stained stuffed animal and asked her two questions: Where are the deported Ukrainian children, and why aren't they returning? What does she think of the repression of journalists in Russia? She didn't answer us. The questions remain, and we will continue to ask them.