Russia is summoning the leaders of U.S. media outlets to discuss its expanded crackdown on press freedom.
The meeting, announced by Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on Friday, will invite these unnamed leaders to the ministry on Monday to discuss measures that may restrict media access in Russia. The response may be due to the United States’s decision to limit Russian media’s reach in the West over their use of propaganda to justify the war in Ukraine.
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“If the work of the Russian media operators and journalists is not normalized in the United States, the most stringent measures will inevitably follow,” Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to Reuters.
“To this end, on Monday, June 6, the heads of the Moscow offices of all American media will be invited to the press center of the Russian Foreign Ministry to explain to them the consequences of their government’s hostile line in the media sphere,” she added. “We look forward to it.”
Russia’s media access has been severely restricted since it decided to invade Ukraine. The European Union and the United Kingdom have taken legal action to limit access to Russian state-operated RT since the start of the war.
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Russia has accused the West of imposing unfair restrictions on its overseas media and has begun taking actions to restrict access to Western media, including a measure passed last month that would allow Russian prosecutors to shut down a bureau if the host country is viewed as “unfriendly” to Russian media. At least one media company, the Canadian outlet CBC’s Moscow bureau, was shut down following the protocol change.
Moscow has also started enforcing stringent “false news” laws, which threaten to put people in jail for up to 15 years if they spread information critical of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Officials in eastern Russia secured their first conviction under this law on Monday against a person who posted videos to a social media page.
