Russia Vows New Crackdown On US Media In Response To RT Sanctions

Following Wednesday’s announcement by Attorney General Merrick Garland of new sanctions targeting Russian state media entities, particularly media network RT, which stands charged with conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Moscow is promising to hit back against US journalists and media.

Garland had said, “The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda.”

But Russia on Friday announced it is imposing new restrictions targeting American media. “A like response is not possible. There is no state news agency in the US, and there is no state TV channel in the U.S.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited in RIA Novosti news agency as saying. But he said new measures targeting American media will follow.

Moscow has long acknowledged that Washington directly sponsors foreign propaganda channels abroad, such as state-run Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). The latter network up until the 1970s was literally run by the CIA, after which the State Department oversaw it.

These US-funded entities were labeled foreign agents in Russia in 2017, and it was only in 2022 that they were banned from Russia altogether. These are Cold War era US stations which disseminated the American view of events abroad as part of soft power. But Moscow is set to now keep going after private media entities operating in Russia.

As for Friday’s fresh announcement, Peskov continued, “But there will certainly be measures here that will restrict their media disseminating their information.”

On the US government’s new target list for sanctions includes RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia.

Earlier this week as part of his trip to Russia’s regional ally Mongolia, President Putin told the newspaper Onoodor, “In order to hide from inconvenient facts, from truthful information, the West, which considers itself the standard of freedom, has launched an open persecution against Russian correspondents.”

Despite Russia recently adding almost one hundred more journalists and entities to a growing blacklist, including members of The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post,  Putin has said Western reporters who conform to Russian law have nothing to worry about.

“The only requirement for them is compliance with Russian legislation,” he said. “Foreign correspondents accredited in our country should understand this,” Putin continued, as also cited in US state-run VOA.