MOSCOW. April 2 (Interfax) - Journalists from EU member countries and the United States are not put on Russia's blacklist, yet Moscow mirrored the rest of the U.S. and European sanctions.
"We have given a practically mirror response but chosen to spare journalists," an informed source told Interfax in Moscow late on Tuesday night.
He recalled Russia's decision not to publish its blacklists and said that individuals subjected to Russian sanctions would learn about that when they filed a visa application with the Russian embassy.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said to Interfax earlier Russia did not intend to publish expanded blacklists of Westerners against whom it had imposed sanctions in response to similar steps by the U.S. and the EU.
"We have no intentions of copying every time what our colleagues in the USA and EU are doing not always wisely and often to their own detriment, therefore we will not publish our expanded lists," he said.
"If any blacklisted citizens of the United States or EU member countries try to enter Russia, they will know they have been blacklisted when Russian border guards tell them that they have been barred," the deputy minister said.
Profound disagreements over Crimea caused the U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia.
The first sanctions, which restricted the access to the EU and the United States and froze assets, were imposed on a number of Russian citizens after the Crimean referendum. The blacklists included a number of Russian parliament members and Crimean officials. The Russian Foreign Ministry retaliated against the move with sanctions on nine U.S. citizens.
The United States and the European Union expanded the sanctions after Crimea had joined Russia. The U.S. expanded the blacklist with Russian businessmen and the EU added a number of Russian officials and journalist Dmitry Kiselyov to its list.