Report: Kremlin Orders State News Orgs To Curb Trump Coverage

3025716 02/10/2017 February 10, 2017. Russian President Vladimir Putin during a joint press conference with Slovenia's President Borut Pahor following their meeting. Sergey Guneev/Sputnik via AP
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The Russian government has instructed state media outlets to cut back on favorable coverage of U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Bloomberg.

Citing three unnamed people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported Thursday that the Kremlin had justified the instruction to cut back on coverage by saying that Russian viewers weren’t interested in the details of Trump’s nascent presidency.

The decision, Bloomberg noted, came on the heels of the ouster of Trump’s national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who sat with Putin at a media event in Moscow in 2015 and is widely reported in Russia to be a sympathetic voice in Washington.

It also came after a tweet from Trump Wednesday, in which he said the nation had “TAKEN” Crimea:

Bloomberg’s story also noted that, according to Interfax data, Trump surpassed Putin in media mentions in January, the first time Putin played second fiddle in the nation’s presses since he returned to presidency in 2012.

Russian journalist Alexey Kovalev seemed to note the change on his Twitter account Thursday:

This post has been updated.

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