Photo: Natalia Gubernatorova
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that during the meeting between Putin and Biden, the American leader asked him to “get behind” Radio Liberty (which performs the functions of a foreign media agent in Russia). At the same time, he noted that the law on foreign agents has existed in the United States for several decades and is actively applied, including in relation to Western countries.
“It was all as if in the order of things, and no one remembered it at all,” the foreign minister said at the webinar ” Russian Foreign Policy: successes, challenges, tasks and prospects”. “And as soon as we borrowed the progressive experience of the world’s leading democracy, we were immediately bombarded with accusations that we were starting to clamp down on the opposition, starting to artificially glue labels.”
Lavrov noted that Russia never starts a confrontation first. He recalled that Russia Today and Sputnik were declared foreign agents in the United States. And they always indicate their status during broadcasting. According to the diplomat, Russia used a mirror step, designating Radio Liberty as a foreign agent, but the publication refuses to mark its content according to the law.
“And American colleagues, including through the mouth of Joe Biden, at a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, began to say’ it’s not good to behave like this, let’s leave them alone, ‘” Lavrov said.