MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. International organizations tasked with ensuring the safety of media workers ignore the pressure exerted on Russia's reporters, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
One of the forms of the West's aggression against Russia was systematic repression of Russian media and journalists, including radio broadcasters, Zakharova emphasized, specifying that "many of them encountered total censorship in various forms, including interference with radio signals, blocking broadcasts, denial of access to Internet resources, and unexpected deletion of accounts from social media platforms. Politically motivated persecutions and expulsions of Russian journalists, threats, legal charges, and trials based on fabricated reasons have become common tools for eliminating dissent in neoliberal pseudo-democracies," the spokeswoman said, speaking on the occasion of World Radio Day.
"Against this backdrop, international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) remain apathetic to the pressure on Russian media and the crimes against Russian journalists, despite their obligations to ensure the safety of media workers and promote media freedom. Some of these organizations have nearly shown solidarity with the Washington-led collective West in its war against the truth," Zakharova noted.
This approach is further highlighted by UNESCO Director-General Audre Azoulay’s report on the safety of journalists and impunity for 2022-2023. The publication deliberately overlooked numerous instances of Ukrainian forces killing Russian journalists and military correspondents. "It is unfortunate that the current leadership of the organization, which initiated World Radio Day, has completely disregarded the ideals and principles on which this international platform has long built cooperation in the media and information field," the Russian diplomat remarked.
"Despite the difficult and often adversarial working conditions, Russian radio broadcasters continue to overcome the information ‘iron curtain’ carefully constructed by Western countries, even expanding their audience at a remarkable pace, meeting the growing demand for unbiased information and ideologically unclouded truth about global events," Zakharova concluded.