Former RT France head Xenia Fedorova resurfaces on French conservative TV

Xenia Fedorova, who previously led RT France before it was banned, has secured a new platform on conservative French television news programs. Her reappearance signals ongoing efforts to maintain Kremlin-aligned messaging in Western media. The development raises fresh concerns about Russian influence operations in France.

Xenia Fedorova, the former head of RT France — the French-language arm of Russia's state-funded broadcaster — has re-emerged as a media presence in France, appearing on conservative television news programs following RT France's ban from European airwaves.

RT France was shut down in the European Union in March 2022, shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as part of a broader package of EU sanctions targeting Kremlin propaganda outlets. Fedorova had been the face of the network's French operations and one of its most prominent public figures.

A New Platform for Kremlin Messaging

Despite the ban, Fedorova has reportedly found a receptive audience among certain conservative French media circles, raising alarm among researchers who track Russian influence operations in Western democracies. Her appearances give continued visibility to narratives broadly aligned with Moscow's foreign policy positions.

France has long been considered a key battleground for Russian information operations in Western Europe, with French far-right and some conservative media outlets historically showing greater openness to voices critical of NATO and sympathetic to Russian geopolitical arguments.

Disinformation Concerns

The development underscores the difficulty EU regulators face in fully severing Kremlin-linked voices from European public discourse. Banning a state media channel does not prevent its former personnel from continuing to operate within the broader media ecosystem, particularly when platforms willing to host them remain available.

Media watchdogs have noted that the shift from institutional state media to domestic conservative outlets represents a soft-power adaptation strategy — one that can make Russian messaging harder to identify and counter compared to overtly state-branded broadcasts.