MOSCOW, May 20. /TASS/. The definition of "unfriendly" used regarding other states is related to their unfriendly policy, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov specified on Thursday.
"If you take an unfriendly stance with regards to Russia then this is what you should be called - an unfriendly state," the spokesman said in response to a question as to why Russia began to use such terms as an "unfriendly state," "foreign agents" and so on.
According to him, the same applies to those media outlets listed as foreign agents. "There are those media outlets that are foreign agents - they receive funding from abroad," Putin’s press secretary said. At the same time, the spokesman said that it is inappropriate to state that the Kremlin declares someone an unfriendly state or a foreign agent since in the former case this is done by the government and in the latter - by the Ministry of Justice. "So, one shouldn’t ask the Kremlin such questions along these lines," he said.
In response to a remark by a Medusa correspondent (recognized in Russia as a media outlet with the functions of a foreign agent) that after the outlet received this status, many state officials stopped talking to it, the Kremlin representative noted: "I can comment on this by the fact that right now you and I are talking during our conference call. Right here, just by this."
The spokesman stayed mum on the publications about harsh comments made by businessman Evgeny Prigozhin directed at a Medusa reporter. "We do not want to comment on the statements of citizens or entrepreneurs of the Russian Federation, they may have their own point of view," he said, stressing that they are entitled to it "if it doesn’t contradict the legislation of the Russian Federation.".