Moscow claims new measures against the media network’s top editors are part of an ‘information campaign’ before US presidential vote.
Russia has said it will take retaliatory measures after the United States announced sanctions against its state-funded media network RT, threatening they will make “everyone shudder”.
Washington’s actions against state broadcaster RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia was “an information campaign” ahead of the US presidential elections in November, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
“When the authorities resort to such primitive ways of influencing their voters, this is the decline of ‘liberal democracies’,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Thursday.
“There will be a response,” Zakharova said.
On Wednesday, two other RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, were indicted by the US for trying to influence the upcoming vote.
They are accused of funnelling $10m to a Tennessee-based company that used social media influence to “create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging”.
“It is an obvious operation, an information campaign … that was long prepared and that is needed ahead of the last stage of the electoral cycle,” Zakharova earlier told state news agency Ria Novosti, adding that the response will be harsh and will make “everyone shudder”.
“We warn that attempts to expel Russian journalists from the territory of the United States, create unacceptable conditions for their work or any other forms of obstruction of their activities, including with the use of visa tools, will become the basis for taking symmetrical and/or asymmetric retaliatory measures against the American media,” she said.
Washington has said that Moscow, which intelligence officials claim has a preference for Republican Donald Trump, remains the primary threat to elections even as the FBI continues to investigate allegations of hacking by Iran that targeted the presidential campaigns of both the former Republican president and Democrat Kamala Harris.
The US Department of State announced it was taking action against several employees of Russian state-owned media outlets, designating them as “foreign missions”, and offering a cash reward for information provided to the US government about foreign election interference.
It also said it was adding media company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly and Sputnik to its list of foreign missions. That will require them to register with the US government and disclose their properties and personnel in the US.
The Russian threat of a harsh response comes at a time when most of US media have downsized or pulled out their staff from Russia after Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive, which was accompanied at home with a massive crackdown on dissent.
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