Russia’s state-funded English news channel RT has aired doubts about the referendum and the size of the turnout, by giving a platform to a conspiracy theorist.
Its commentator Afshin Rattansi, presenter of RT’s Going Underground show, suggested the result could have been rigged: “There’s weren’t UN observers. This may seem an absurd point to some, but this is a nuclear power in Scotland. There were international considerations – Britain’s nuclear deterrent. And with the vote as close as this, with the mainstream media on one side, with a massive amount of people from Westminster running up to beg Scotland the other way, and certain recounts in certain bits of the poll, which way did the vote go, really?”
He added: “It is normally the sort of turnout you would expect in North Korea. Usually media here would go ‘we don’t believe it. How can it be nearly 90%?’.”