The Kremlin on Friday accused the United States of applying unacceptable pressure on Russian media after the U.S. Justice Department charged Russian TV contributor Dimitri Simes and his wife with schemes to violate U.S. sanctions.
The two indictments were announced just one day after the U.S. took several legal actions against Russia to combat alleged efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential elections, including charging two employees of the Russian state media network RT and sanctioning RT and its top network editor.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who has said Russia is not seeking to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, told reporters that Washington was trying to ensure that Moscow's own perspective on world affairs was not available to people.
"Washington continues to try to put pressure on Russia, on Russian citizens, and even on the Russian media, which is engaged in informing both citizens inside our country and world public opinion about what is happening, from our perspective," said Peskov.
"Washington does not even accept that there should be options out there for anyone to get news from our perspective.
This is nothing other than blatant pressure. We strongly condemn this stance as unacceptable," he said.
Moscow still grants accreditation to Western journalists to work in Russia, though many have left since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 and the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges in March 2023.
Gershkovich, who denied the charges, was freed in a prisoner swap last month.
Russia has said it will take retaliatory measures against U.S. media in response to Washington's moves against RT.
Asked what those measures would be, Peskov said Russia carefully evaluated the editorial policies of various foreign media outlets and would take those factors into account when making any decisions, on what he suggested would be a case-by-case basis.
