BBC ( Getty Images)

Russian state-backed news channel RT has had its licence to broadcast in the UK revoked “with immediate effect”, media regulator Ofcom has said.

“We do not consider RT’s licensee, ANO TV Novosti, fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast licence,” it explained.

Ofcom is carrying out 29 investigations “into the due impartiality of RT’s news and current affairs coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.

The channel had already disappeared from all broadcast platforms in the UK.

It was removed earlier this month as a result of a ban imposed by the European Union.

Although the UK is no longer in the EU, the bloc applied sanctions to satellite companies in Luxembourg and France, which provided the RT feed to Sky, Freesat and Freeview in the UK.