About 20 American journalists have been added to the list of Americans banned from entering Russia.
“We remind the current US authorities of the inevitability of punishment for hostile actions”, writes the Russian Foreign Ministry.
At least 23 journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among others, as well as several US officials, lawyers and leading representatives of military-industrial companies, are targeted.
The State Department justifies the bans says they are “in response to the Russophobic course pursued by the Biden administration with the declared goal of ‘inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow’”.
According to the ministry, the journalists “leading liberal-globalist publications involved in the production and dissemination of ‘fakes’ about Russia and the Russian armed forces”.
The Wall Street Journal’s Emma Tucker is one of the people on the list and said in a commentary that “The Putin regime is farcically consistent in its all-out assault on free press and truth. This laughable list of targets is no exception”.
Protracted censorship war
Russia’s decision comes shortly after the US announced new sanctions against more than 400 companies accused of supporting Russia during the war against Ukraine – companies based in Russia, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, which allegedly helped Russia evade previous sanctions.
Recently, the US also announced that it is preparing further arms deliveries to Ukraine, which is seen by Russia as a provocation and an escalation of the situation.
In parallel with the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia, there has also been a long-running “censorship war” – where Russian media have been blocked in the West at various times – to which Moscow has responded by censoring a large number of Western media.
In many cases, this has made it difficult for interested parties to access the “other side’s perspective” without using VPN services and similar measures to circumvent the blocks.
