Moscow turns off Voice of America radio --- MOSCOW – In an unusually sharp and public rebuke, the U.S. Embassy criticized Russia Thursday for cutting off Voice of America radio transmissions in Moscow, which it described as part of an effort to limit independent media here. -- The refusal to renew an AM broadcasting license for VOA comes as Russia has been assailed by officials in neighboring Ukraine for using state-controlled media to present what they say is inflammatory and distorted coverage of the new government there. -- Voice of America, financed by the U.S. Congress and overseen by an agency called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, was forced off the air at the end of March after Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) Information Agency, wrote a terse refusal to a request for a license renewal saying, “We are not going to cooperate.” -- Kiselyov also has a Sunday evening television show recapping the week’s news that has presented Ukraine as overrun by Fascists bent on the destruction of Russian speakers in the eastern part of the country, where small but well-organized groups of pro-Russian protesters have taken over government buildings in three cities this week. He also has described Russia as the only country capable of reducing the United States to “radioactive ash.” -- In March he was put on a sanctions list, barring him from travel in European Union countries, because of what the EU called his role in “the government propaganda supporting the deployment of Russian forces in Ukraine." -- VOA had been broadcasting news in Russian and English lessons on 810 AM in Moscow. It plans to continue operating digitally and by satellite. In 2012, the other U.S.-financed station, Radio Liberty, lost its AM license. It also broadcasts by satellite and on the Internet now. -- “In the last year, the Russian Government has passed laws imposing unprecedented censorship and restrictions on media and online publications,” the U.S. Embassy statement said, adding that the Kremlin had turned "the respected news wire service Ria Novosti into a propaganda service." - More, Kathy Lally, Washingtonpost, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/moscow-turns-off-voice-of-america-radio/2014/04/10/9c184fd8-8362-43fd-9dc0-26a80f849a0e_story.html