By Anita Komuves

BUDAPEST (Reuters) -U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) will shut down in Hungary on Friday, it said, ending a five-year run of a media service that a U.S. official said had damaged President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in a key ally.

Launched originally in 1950 to broadcast to communist-run countries during the Cold War, RFE/RL still reaches millions in eastern Europe, including Russia and Ukraine, as well as central Asia and the Middle East, aiming to support media freedom.

But the news service has been hit hard by efforts to downsize government under Trump, who counts Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a right-wing nationalist, as a close ally in the European Union.

Kari Lake, Trump’s administrator in the U.S. Agency for Global Media that over

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