Russia Names The 9 US News Outlets It Will Retaliate Against

After hinting that retaliation was imminent, Russian lawmakers in the Duma - Russia’s lower house of Parliament - have approved a law that would require nine US news outlets to be labeled “foreign agents” in response to Washington"s decision to require Russia Today to register as a foreign agent last week, a decision that Moscow has slammed as hypocritical and infringing on free speech.

Reuters reports that Russia’s lower house of Parliament has approved the law - which allows Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of “foreign agents” and to disclose the source of their funding.

The law must now pass the upper house, which is likely to happen next week. Once President Vladimir Putin signs it, it will become law. The path to passage looks relatively straightforward, and it"s likely the bill will become a law.

The Russian Justice Ministry on Thursday published a list of the news outlets that it said could be affected by the law.

Meanwhile, the outlets are the US-government-sponsored Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe (RFE), otherwise known as Radio Liberty, radio channels, along with seven separate Russian or local-language news outlets run by Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

One of the seven outlets provides news on Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, one on Siberia, and one on the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region. Another covers provincial Russia, one is an online TV station, another covers the mostly Muslim region of Tatarstan, and the other is a news portal that fact-checks the statements of Russian officials.

Russia"s attack on US-funded media is part of the fallout from allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential election last year in favor of Donald Trump, Reuters noted.

US intelligence officials accuse the Kremlin of using Russian media organizations it finances to influence US voters. Meanwhile, the US has funded organizations like RFE since the early days of the Cold War. RFE was founded to broadcast pro-capitalist messaging to Soviet Satellites in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Kremlin denies meddling in the election and has said the restrictions on Russian broadcasters in the US amount to an attack on free speech. After the US forced RT to register, Kremlin spokespeople hinted that the government had a “surprise” retaliation at the ready.

The draft legislation would allow Russian authorities to designate foreign media as "foreign agents", making them subject to the same requirements that are applied to foreign-funded non-governmental organizations under a 2012 law. Under that law, "foreign agents" must include in any information they publish or broadcast to Russian audiences a mention of their "foreign agent" designation.

They also must apply for inclusion in a government register, submit regular reports on their sources of funding, on their objectives, on how they spend their money, and who their managers are.

They can be subject to spot checks by the authorities to make sure they comply with the rules, according to the 2012 law, which has forced some NGOs to close.

Radio Free Europe said in a statement it did not want to speculate what steps Russia might take against it next, and looked forward to continuing its journalistic work. Voice of America Director Amanda Bennett has said the station remains committed to providing independent news to global audiences.
 

Russia Warns It Will Retaliate Against American Media Next Week

It has been over a month since Russia and the US engaged in political tit-for-tat escalations, but that is about to change: after a recent crackdown by the U.S. government, which ordered state broadcaster RT to register as a foreign agent following accusations it interfered in last year’s presidential elections, and which saw Twitter ban all RT-sourced advertising (despite actively seeking RT"s business beforehand) Russia said on Thursday it would retaliate next week against the American media, Bloomberg reports.

While the Russians didn’t specify what measures would be taken, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that “practical implementation” of steps in response to the U.S. move would begin next week. Russia has previously warned its retaliation would mirror restrictions imposed by the U.S. The foreign-agent label, which applies to several state-owned outlets operating in the U.S. including Japan’s NHK and the China Daily newspaper, requires disclosure of the media organization’s foreign funding.

As reported earlier today, RT"s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, said on the broadcaster’s website that it has no choice but to comply with the DOJ’s demand to register as a foreign agent by a final deadline of Monday. Otherwise, the head of the channel’s U.S. subsidiary would face arrest and its bank accounts would be frozen, she said. “This demand violates U.S. law and we intend to appeal it in U.S. courts.”

What may Russia"s next move be?  One month ago, Zakharova said that “we have never used Russian law in relation to foreign correspondents as a lever of pressure, or censorship, or some kind of political influence, never. But this is a particular case..."

She cited a 1991 Russian law which, she said, stated that if a Russian media outlet is subject to restrictions in a foreign country, then Moscow has the right to impose proportionate restrictions on media outlets from that country operating inside Russia. “Correspondingly, everything that Russian journalists and the RT station are subject to on U.S. soil, after we qualified it as restriction of their activities, we can apply similar measures to American journalists, American media here, on Russian territory." She did not identify any specific U.S. media outlets that would be targeted. She said it made no difference from the Russian government’s point of view if those outlets were backed by the U.S. state, or privately-funded.

In September, Russia’s state communications regulator accused CNN International of violating its license to broadcast in Russia and said it had summoned the broadcaster’s representatives in connection with the matter. The watchdog did not publicly disclose the nature of the violation. The head of the regulator said it was a technical matter and denied that politics was involved. The U.S. Congress is investigating RT’s role in the 2016 election, as well as possible influence by state-owned Sputnik news service.

Russian authorities have signaled that CNN and Radio Liberty could be among those targeted in response to the action against RT.