Russia asks BBC journalist to return home in row with UK | freedom of press news

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Russian state television announced that the move was in response to London’s refusal to renew or issue visas to Russian journalists in Britain.

Russian state television reported that Russia had asked a BBC journalist working in Moscow to leave the country by the end of this month in retaliation for what it described as London’s discrimination against Russian journalists working in Britain.

In an unusual move that signals a further deterioration of already tenuous relations between London and Moscow, Rossiya-24 TV said late Thursday that Sarah Rainford, a BBC English-speaking correspondent in Moscow, would be returning home in what it called ” Historic sign of deportation.

The move, a de facto expulsion, follows a crackdown ahead of September’s parliamentary elections on Russian-speaking media at home that authorities see as backed by malicious foreign interests aimed at fueling unrest.

Russia 24 said the Russian authorities had decided not to renew Rainford’s accreditation to work as a foreign journalist in Moscow after the end of this month when her current visa expires.

She added that this step came in response to London’s refusal to renew or issue entry visas to Russian journalists in Britain.

The channel cited Britain’s treatment of Russia’s state-backed channel RT and government online news outlet Sputnik, saying neither of them could be accredited in Britain to cover international events.

The British government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Sarah Rainford is going home. According to our experts, the BBC Moscow correspondent will not have her visa extended because Britain, in the media sphere, has crossed all our red lines.

“Sarah Rainford’s expulsion is our symmetrical response,” she said.

BBC Director-General Tim Davy called her expulsion “a direct assault on media freedom, which we condemn unreservedly”.

We urge the Russian authorities to reconsider their decision. In the meantime, we will continue to report events in the region independently and impartially.

Rainford did not respond to a request for comment. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said BBC representatives had been in the ministry in recent days, and everything had been explained to them in detail.

Zakharova said Moscow had warned London several times that it would respond to what it described as visa-related persecution of Russian journalists in Britain.

The British Embassy in Moscow declined to comment immediately.

Rainford is part of a team providing English-language British Public Service broadcasters with content about Russia and the former Soviet Union. The BBC also runs a large Russian language service in Moscow.

Rainford, a Russian speaker, is a BBC foreign correspondent who has also done assignments in Havana, Istanbul and Madrid, and is currently one of the BBC’s Monday correspondents in Moscow.

I recently caused a stir when I asked Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko at a press conference if he was still legitimate in light of the violent suppression of dissent in the former Soviet republic.

She will be the first British journalist to be forced to leave Russia in a decade.

Relations between Russia and Britain were severely strained for some time. The government in London has repeatedly criticized the Kremlin’s human rights abuses, particularly in the case of Alexei Navalny, a jailed anti-corruption campaigner and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin.

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