MOSCOW, November 13. /TASS/. The number of overseas Russian-language radio stations has been growing over the past few years, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told an international conference on the role of radio in the global media battleground on Wednesday.

"Over the past few years, we have witnessed a visible, over 2.5-fold increase in the number of Russian-language radio stations abroad," Zakharova stressed, noting that this figure had risen from 175 to almost 500 between 2010 and 2018.

This includes the former Soviet republics as well as other countries. "These figures clearly signal that the importance of radio and radio services will continually rise," she added.

The diplomat noted that this has been going on in the midst of a challenging geopolitical environment. "In this sense, radio has taken on a specific role, since we can cite numerous cases where the operations of a network of correspondents have been blocked on the territory of some states. We see incidents in which [radio] frequencies and signals have been jammed. This is absurd for the 21st century, but we do have such examples," the diplomat added.

Zakharova also drew attention to increasingly frequent attempts in the West to block news content on the Internet, adding that incidents in which radio frequencies are blocked are isolated. "In this context, the role of radio as an avenue to transmit information also ascends to absolutely new levels that are yet to be understood," the spokeswoman stressed.

According to her, Russian radio stations and Russian media in general are popular because in many countries this is "the only alternative point of view available in the media sphere."