In January, a post I saw on Twitter/X shocked me.
“URGENT: As of now, I have ZERO access to any money,” Hüseyin Dogru wrote. “I can’t provide food for my family, including two newborns, due to EU sanctions.”
Dogru is a journalist, a German citizen living in Berlin.
After reading his post, I sent him a private message offering to order groceries and have them sent to his home.
The reply shocked me even more. “Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to accept any financial or material support,” Dogru wrote.
Dogru is the first European Union citizen known to be living inside the EU to face extrajudicial sanctions imposed by Brussels – robbing him of fundamental civil and humanitarian rights.
He’s also the first person to be sanctioned specifically for his reporting related to Palestine.
“I’m not allowed to exist anymore, I’m not allowed to provide my children with the basic necessities,” he explained on The Electronic Intifada Podcast this week.
“I can’t pay my rent, I can’t pay my lawyers and yes – I’m not even allowed to accept any kind of food, water or medicine whatsoever from third parties.”
Im quite obviously aginst sanctioning people into being unable to live, but I’m also quite curious about those Russian propaganda connections mentioned.
At any rate, to my understanding this kind of treatment is fundamentally incompatible with the German constitution.
From the EU website (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL_202500965)
Hüseyin Doğru is the founder and representative of AFA Medya A.Ş. which is a media company based in Istanbul. AFA Medya A.Ş. operates “RED”, which comprises a number of media platforms, and which has close financial and organisational connections with Russian state propaganda entities and actors, and shares deep structural ties, including interlinkages between, and rotation of, individual personnel with Russian state media organisations.
RED has used its media platforms – often publishing under “redstreamnet” or “thered.stream” – to systematically spread false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience, including by disseminating the narratives of radical Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas.
During a violent occupation of a German university by anti-Israel rioters, RED personnel coordinated with the occupiers to disseminate images of their vandalism – which included the use of Hamas symbols – through their online channels, thus providing them with an exclusive media platform, facilitating the violent nature of the protest.
Through AFA Medya, Hüseyin Doğru thus supports actions by the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability and security in the Union and in one or several of its Member States, including by indirectly supporting and facilitating violent demonstrations and engaging in coordinated information manipulation.
They also claim his nationality as Turkey, and his address being in Istanbul.
This was Dogru’s legal response from last year. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ%3AC_202504627
This one does list his citizenship as German. https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/Q134594800/
I’m not finding a whole lot more, from either perspective. Just news articles from the time of the sanctions being announced. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/germany-says-russia-using-media-platform-red-sow-discontent-2025-07-02/
Outside information here is sparse.
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Ok, astroturfer. Your faux outrage is cringe.
Have you followed your link https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/175657 to the text of the sanction
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AL_202500965 ?
As the other comment already quotes:
RED has used its media platforms – often publishing under “redstreamnet” or “thered.stream” – to systematically spread false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience, including by disseminating the narratives of radical Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas.
During a violent occupation of a German university by anti-Israel rioters, RED personnel coordinated with the occupiers to disseminate images of their vandalism – which included the use of Hamas symbols – through their online channels, thus providing them with an exclusive media platform, facilitating the violent nature of the protest.
That looks majorly like it is about Gaza and not “pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian” propaganda. The Russian link comes from
rotation of, individual personnel with Russian state media organisations.
The EU should be able to intervene. But this is an executive order of the commission and not a judical verdict.
The EU is moving into the same dictatorial territory as Trump’s executive orders with which he has just set new tariffs or with which he moves ICE or can bomb Iran.
Russia mustn’t be an excuse to introduce the abuse of power. Once Russia will have lost, that abuse won’t stop.
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It can’t be Russian propaganda to quote EU legal texts and to question extrajudical punishment. Those are facts. If that sounds like propaganda to you then your bias is far too strong. Russia mustn’t be used to turn the EU into a totalitarian regime. We criticise the same things at Trump and worry there. It should worry us in the EU, too.
Red presents itself as a revolutionary platform for independent journalists. However, it has close links with the Russian state media outlet RT.
The only relevant question is if they are a revolutionary platform for independent journalists. If they are, especially independent, it doesn’t matter where their funding comes from.
Of course Russia profits from revealed scandals but citizens profit much more. Who else but the enemy finances independent journalism? We finance it to examine Russia and Russia finances it to examine us.
Russia looked funny when their newspapers had to move. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moscow_Times Now we look funny, too, while claiming the moral high ground.
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I am quoting from your link https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/175657 and your comment. My comments don’t rely on the original post.
If working with your material makes you doubt my comments, I have to ask, have you read what you post?
I swear these people must be paid to put this much effort into smearing the US’ enemies and journalists who stray from Washington’s talking points daily for years. https://lemmy.ml/post/39655060
I hope they are being paid, but so many seem to do it for free simply for the love of the game
Are they people? The last answer doesn’t make sense. He complains about a referenced article but I have copied his link and referenced wikipedia to the disadvantage of Russia.
Which requires me to point out a problem with the moderation. I would prefer if Hotznplotzn could answer so that I can know how genuine the account is.
Another issue is that removing the comments makes it impossible to share the conversation in a discussion about accounts, or to compare the comments.
But I have no idea how to balance that with the desire to have a clean comment section.
