Russia said on Tuesday it was banning 81 different EU media outlets from broadcasting inside Russia, including Agence France-Presse and Politico, in response to a similar ban imposed by the EU on a number of Russian media outlets.
The EU said in May it was suspending the distribution of four “Kremlin-linked propaganda networks”, and stripping them of their rights to broadcast within the union.
The ban applied to the Voice of Europe, the RIA news agency, and the Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers, it was said at the time.
The Russian Foreign Ministry hit back on Tuesday, releasing a list of 81 media outlets from 25 EU member countries, as well as pan-European media outlets, whose broadcasts will no longer be available on Russian territory.
It accused these media organisations of “systematically distributing false information” about Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.
France’s Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency, Austria’s ORF state TV company, Ireland’s RTE broadcaster and Spain’s EFE news agency, along with several other national broadcasters, newspapers and Politico were among the channels affected by the Russian move.
“The Russian Federation has repeatedly warned at various levels that politically motivated harassment of domestic journalists and unjustified restrictions on Russian media in the EU will not be tolerated,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Despite this, Brussels and the capitals of the bloc’s countries preferred to take the path of escalating tensions, forcing Moscow to take proportionate countermeasures.”
It said it would review its ban if the EU lifted sanctions on RIA, Izvestia and the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, which it described as Russian media outlets.
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said in May that the EU move showed the West was refusing to accept any alternative points of view and was destroying freedom of expression.
Italy’s foreign ministry on Tuesday condemned Russia’s decision to ban access to dozens of European media outlets, including Italian broadcasters Rai and La7 and newspapers La Repubblica and La Stampa.
“We regret the unfair measures taken against these Italian broadcasters and newspapers, which have always provided objective and unbiased information about the conflict in Ukraine,” the ministry said.
AFP declined to comment. Politico and RTE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the move, which comes a day before the Russian trial of US journalist Ivan Gershkovitch on espionage charges.
Gershkovitch, a Wall Street Journal reporter who became the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the Cold War more than three decades ago, has denied that he is a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Journal says Gershkovitch was doing his job and has denied that he is a spy.
Many Western news organizations withdrew their staff from Russia after the Russians launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and passed legislation soon after that prescribed lengthy prison sentences for “defaming” the armed forces.
Russian officials say that a large portion of Western media spreads false and highly unbalanced stories about Russia, and that Western media organizations are engaged in information warfare against Russia.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
