The Russian government on Friday accused the United States of exerting undue pressure on Russian media after the U.S. Justice Department charged a Russian state TV contributor and his wife with schemes to violate U.S. sanctions.
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled indictments against Dimitri Simes and his wife, Anastasia, charging them with laundering funds and violating U.S. sanctions for the benefit of Channel One Russia, a Russian broadcaster that was sanctioned in 2022.
The indictments came after the DOJ took several legal actions against Russia to fight alleged interference in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Those actions included charging two employees at the Russian state news network RT, along with sanctioning RT and its top editor.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the U.S. government was trying to prevent people from accessing Moscow’s perspective on global issues.
“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, who has also said that Moscow is not trying to influence the U.S. election.
“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,” Peskov added.
Russia has also said it will retaliate against U.S. media over Washington’s actions against RT.
Some information in this report came from Reuters.
