Russia says it will take action against US media in response to Russian media charges

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia said on Thursday it would take retaliatory measures against U.S. media in response to U.S. charges against Russian media executives and state broadcaster RT, which Washington has accused of trying to influence the 2024 presidential election.

The United States on Wednesday filed money-laundering charges against two employees of RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire an American company to produce online content to influence the 2024 election.

The U.S. Treasury and State departments also announced actions targeting RT, including the network's top editor, Margarita Simonyan. U.S. officials said Russia's goal was to exacerbate U.S. political divisions and weaken public support for American aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Russia's foreign ministry said the U.S. moves were part of a plan to purge any dissenting voices from the global media landscape and to stoke fears among U.S. voters about Russia as a mythical external enemy.

"When the authorities resort to such primitive ways of influencing their voters, this is the decline of 'liberal democracies'," Maria Zakharova, foreign ministry spokeswoman, said in a statement on the U.S. action.

"There will be a response," Zakharova said.

"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."

The France-based Reporters Without Borders ranks Russia at 162 out of 180 countries in monitors on press freedom and ranks the United States at 55. Norway was top and Eritrea was bottom.

Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia has tightened control over information and the media, forcing the closure of the last significant independent news outlets and designating many journalists and activists as "foreign agents".

Many Western news organisations have left Moscow and the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich in 2023 prompted many more journalists to leave. There are now hardly any U.S. reporters left in Russia.

ELECTION MEDDLING ACCUSATIONS

Russian officials say Western media groups give indulgent coverage of Ukraine, biased coverage of the war and excessively negative coverage of Russia. Western media groups say they try to give balanced coverage.

RT responded with ridicule to the U.S. charges.

"Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT's interference in the US elections," the media outlet told Reuters. RT ceased operating in the United States after major television distributors dropped it following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Simonyan said the charges were an attempt to drown RT as a competitor.

The Kremlin in June dismissed as absurd U.S. intelligence assertions that Russia was seeking to meddle in the presidential election and has said that U.S. spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy.

Previous U.S. intelligence assessments have found that Moscow tried to meddle in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Russian officials have suggested that the United States has also meddled in its domestic affairs.

Russian lawmaker Maria Butina, who spent 15 months in U.S. prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and now represents the ruling United Russia party, said the U.S. claims were nonsense.

"Russia thinks it does not matter who wins the U.S. elections – the only winner is the U.S. private military-industrial complex. That is what matters – and nothing else," Butina told Reuters.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Michael Perry and Toby Chopra)