Kremlin: Washington violates the US laws by declaring news agency Russia Today as a foreign agent
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova said that Washington violated its own legislation and the principles of freedom of speech when it said that the RT television channel is a foreign agent as reported by news agency TASS.
“We conducted our own expert study of this issue. It was based on a study of U.S. legislation, all major U.S. legislation that regulates the activities of journalists, including foreign journalists,” she said.
“The evaluation of the Foreign Ministry in this case is unambiguous - there is a clear violation of U.S. domestic legislation and the principles of freedom of speech,” Zakharova said.
“This is the basis of American foreign policy – sometimes impose, sometimes recommend, and sometimes introduce in all possible ways the very principles that they, within their own country, grossly violate, specifically with regard to the Russian television channel,” she added.
The U.S. Department of Justice has appealed to the Russian television company RT, or Russia Today, with a request to register the American branch of the broadcasting company as a “foreign agent.”
In a report released in January by the U.S. secret service, it was said that Russia had intervened in the 2016 presidential election.
The RT TV channel is named separately in the report, which experts consider “the main tool of the Kremlin's international propaganda.” The document states that RT America “positions itself as an American channel and deliberately tries to hide any legal links with the Russian government.”