Purveyors of “fake news” were among the almost 100 blacklisted Americans
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that it has blacklisted 92 American citizens, including two dozen employees of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, and Daily Telegraph.
The travel ban was enacted in response to “blanket sanctions” against Russian politicians, businessmen, journalists and cultural workers imposed by the US and its allies over the Ukraine conflict.
According to the Foreign Ministry, Wednesday’s sanctions are a “response to the Russophobic course pursued by the Biden administration with the declared goal of inflicting a ‘strategic defeat’ on Moscow.”
Most of the names on the “stop list” belong to government officials and executives of military industry companies such as Huntington Ingalls Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, Palantir and Anduril.
However, the blacklist “also includes editorial staff and reporters of leading liberal-globalist publications involved in the production and dissemination of fake news about Russia and the Russian armed forces, and the propaganda cover for the ‘hybrid war’ unleashed by Washington,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The Wall Street Journal accounted for 13 of the sanctioned editors and journalists, including its editor in chief, Emma Tucker. Five more work for the New York Times, four for the Washington Post, and one each for the UK-based Telegraph and Guardian.
The latest sanctions come after a number of Western journalists accompanied Ukrainian troops in their cross-border operation in Russia’s Kursk Region. Moscow has opened a criminal case against two Italian reporters and CNN’s chief international security correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh.
Moscow will continue to respond to the “American ruling elite’s mad sanctions frenzy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry noted, reminding the current authorities in Washington “of the inevitability of punishment for hostile actions, whether it’s direct encouragement of [Vladimir] Zelensky and his henchmen to commit acts of aggression and terrorism or attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia.”
