The BBC has asked the UK Foreign Office for additional funding for broadcasting to Ukraine, but has not yet received a response, The Guardian newspaper reports. Former BBC World Service Director Peter Horrocks, who resigned in early December, is confident that the UK and the US are losing the "global information war" to the Kremlin due to the financial superiority of Russian state news channels. The BBC's annual budget is currently £245 million (RUB 21.5 billion). Until April 2014, the BBC World Service was sponsored by the UK Foreign Office, but now the budget is made up only of subscription fees. John Whittingdale, Chairman of the UK House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has expressed his support for the BBC, promising to seek guarantees for the BBC in the information war against the Russian TV channel Russia Today. "Russia and China have greatly surpassed us in terms of information, and I have raised this issue with the BBC's management," The Guardian quotes Whittingdale as saying. According to RBC , the Russian government has already increased funding for the Russia Today channel by 41%; in 2015, the channel will receive 15.38 billion rubles from the federal budget, while last year the channel was allocated 11.87 billion rubles. According to Russia Today editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, the budget has been increased due to the launch of channels in French and German.

Information Weapons. James Appathurai

NATO Assistant Secretary General: "Russia is using information as a weapon in this crisis."

NATO has also begun to fight against "Russian propaganda", the alliance is making its own videos debunking "Russian myths", the Financial Times reports. According to the publication, NATO is planning to launch a large-scale campaign to counter Russian media. Over the past six months, Russian propaganda has increased significantly, but this is not only a Russian but also a global trend, the parties are using long-term propaganda campaigns instead of participating in armed conflicts, says Jonathan Ayal from the British RUSI. Ayal is sure that the increase in propaganda is the first sign of a revival of the Cold War. Andrei Novikov-Lanskoy, head of the department of political and business journalism at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, agrees that the Russia Today TV channel has sharply increased in recent years, and an interested Western audience perceives it as an alternative point of view. Foreign broadcasting will develop both in Russia and abroad, this is the main trend now, but Russia is still catching up with Western propaganda, the expert is sure.

The recent growth in the audience of the Russia Today TV channel in the UK has puzzled British officials, a source from the British Interactive Media Association told Vedomosti. Politicians are at a loss, resources are insufficient against the backdrop of a large-scale Russian campaign, and additional funding for the BBC service is needed to expand broadcasting in the CIS countries and increase the number of employees who will closely monitor Russia Today news and prepare refutations of the news.

Britain's BBC lacks resources to counter Russia Today