Russian diplomacy summoned the French ambassador in Moscow on Monday to denounce the discrimination of which, according to it, Russian journalists are victims, accusing Paris of having mistreated its correspondents during the G20 summit in India.
Ambassador Pierre Levy was summoned because of “discriminatory and openly Russophobic actions by representatives of the French authorities against RIA Novosti correspondents and the editor-in-chief of Russia-News during the G20 summit in New Delhi,” he said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “French President (Emmanuel) Macron brutally denied them access to a press conference,” he added.
Russian diplomacy has accused France of violating “the fundamental principle of freedom of the press” and criticizes it for not having apologized to the Russian journalists excluded, Moscow says, from the September 10 press conference and to the French organizers of the event of having tried to confiscate the phones of the interested parties.
A precedent with the RT channel in France
Russia denounced the incident at the G20 the same day. At the time, the French presidency did not comment, but a member of the delegation refuted accusations of discrimination and brutality.
“We had to reject around thirty journalists of all nationalities due to lack of space in the room,” said this source, who did not want to be identified.
A correspondent present at the press conference noted that the press room was full and that journalists had not been able to access it. Russia has long accused France of attacking representatives of its media, in particular because the Elysée refused to credit the RT television network for spreading rumors about Emmanuel Macron.
In 2017, the French president, welcoming Vladimir Putin to France, insisted that RT and the Sputnik news site were “organs of false propaganda.”
Source: BFM TV
