Russia vows to curb US media over RT row
The United States indicted two RT employees and slapped its top editors with sanctions on Wednesday.
Russian flag. Photo: Pixabay
MOSCOW - Russia will impose domestic restrictions on US media outlets in response to Washington's sanctions on Russian state-funded news network RT, the Kremlin said on Friday.
The United States indicted two RT employees and slapped its top editors with sanctions on Wednesday, accusing them of trying to influence the upcoming 2024 US presidential election.
"A symmetrical response is not possible. There is no state news agency in the US, and there is no state TV channel in the US," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RIA Novosti news agency.
"But there will certainly be measures here that will restrict their media disseminating their information," he said.
When asked about these restrictions in his daily press briefing, Peskov said Russia would take into account how the outlets covered the Ukraine conflict.
"Some of them... present information in a one-sided manner and do not shy away from fake news. We will take all this into account," the Kremlin spokesman said.
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Peskov also justified Moscow's unprecedented censorship during its Ukraine offensive, in a rare admission of Russia's tight grip on information.
"In the state of war that we are in, restrictions are justified and censorship is also justified," he said earlier in separate remarks to the TASS news agency.
Most US media outlets downsized or pulled their staff from Russia when Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive amid laws targeting independent reporting on the conflict.
Western countries have separately curbed access to RT and other Russian-owned news outlets, accusing them of spreading brazen pro-Kremlin propaganda and showing viewers a warped view of the offensive.
The 10 individuals and two entities sanctioned by the US Treasury Department on Wednesday included RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia.
Washington accused Simonyan of being "central" to Russia's efforts to propagate its influence and accused Brodskaia of having reported directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.