MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) - Moscow will not let the U.S. restrictions on Russian media holdings slide, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.
"Actions of the U.S. authorities, which directly contravene their obligation to provide free access to information and mass media pluralism, will not go unanswered. We give yet another warning that attempted deportation of Russian journalists from the U.S. territory, creation of unbearable conditions for their work, or any other hindrances to their activity, including by means of the visa instrument, will cause symmetric and/or asymmetric countermeasures against U.S. media outlets," Zakharova said.
She thus commented on media reports about the latest package of sanctions imposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the Rossiya Segodnya media group, the RT television channel, and some of their subsidiaries (Sputnik, Ruptly).
"I should say right away that this and other attacks on Russian media launched by the United States with the assistance of major mainstream outlets are the result of operations carefully thought-out in the depths of security services to 'sterilize' the national and, in the long term, global information space from any forms of dissent. It is obvious that these intentional actions create the necessary media background for the implementation of corresponding pre-election decisions," she said.
In the meantime, the United States "keeps interfering in internal affairs of other states, trampling upon free access to information, aggressively pushing its stance and actively engaging in electoral engineering in various parts of the planet, thus provoking crises and conflicts with catastrophic humanitarian consequences," Zakharova said.