MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Friday that France’s refusal to grant visas to two journalists from Russian news outlet Izvestia amounted to discrimination and Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused Paris of unleashing a campaign of harrassment against Russian media.
Izvestia said the pair had been refused visas to visit France to report on commemorations this year of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and that the French embassy in Moscow had told them that one or more EU countries regarded them as threats to public order and national security.
Asked on a conference call with reporters whether the Kremlin regarded the French refusal to accredit the journalists as “discrimination,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
“We can and we must (regard it as discrimination).”
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, also commented on the incident, telling Izvestia:
“Paris has unleashed a campaign of harassment against the Russian media.”
Russia said on Thursday it had refused to extend the accreditation of Le Monde’s long-serving Moscow correspondent Benjamin Quénelle due to France’s refusal to issue a visa to a Russian reporter, leaving the renowned French daily absent from Moscow for the first time since the 1950s.
Le Monde, one of France’s most influential newspapers, criticised what it said was the “covert expulsion of our journalist.”
France’s Foreign Ministry called on Russia to reverse its decision and said that if it did not do so, there would a response.
Zakharova has said Russia will restore the Le Monde correspondent’s accreditation as soon as France grants a visa to a journalist from the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper who has twice been refused a visa to work as a journalist in France.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
