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Russian senate working on measures to resist Western information warfare

Senior Russian MP suggested holding an international conference on freedom of the media amid information wars

Russian Federation Council Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS

Russian Federation Council

© Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS

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MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. The Russian Federation Council (the parliament's upper house) Interim Commission on Information Policy and Cooperation with the Media is working on ways to resist a number of Western countries’ attempts to trigger information warfare and restrict freedom of the media, the Commission’s head Alexei Pushkov told a plenary meeting on Friday.

"They offer us a new information reality. Until now, information served politics, but now information itself is politics, it actually shapes politics. This requires a response. We can’t leave the battlefield to those waging information wars. In this regard, our commission intends to make an action plan to resist these efforts in the next political season," Pushkov noted.

He also suggested that Russian senators should seek to include issues concerning freedom of the media on international meetings' and conferences' agenda.

According to Pushkov, information wars are about to reach a new level, becoming comprehensive. "I would like to point out that Western countries officially allocate budget funds for these purposes," he noted.

Pushkov added that this year the US Congress has allocated tens of millions of dollars "in order to spread the so-called reliable information in Eastern Europe and support the so-called independent media." He continued that the West also sought "to create black and white lists of media outlets, dividing them into unreliable and reliable."

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