MOSCOW, September 12. /TASS/. The French Foreign Ministry’s refusal to comment on Moscow’s official condemnation of the denial of accreditation to Russian journalists to cover French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent news conference displays a level of unprofessionalism stemming from a reluctance to be held accountable for their own actions, the Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ) said on Tuesday.

Earlier, Russian journalist Yekaterina Nadolskaya was denied accreditation to Macron’s news conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova drew attention to this incident, describing it as an "unabashed manifestation of Nazism."

According to the RUJ, the French Foreign Ministry refused to provide any commentary on Zakharova’s statement, saying merely that she was "exaggerating things."

"The Russian Union of Journalists, in turn, expresses extreme bewilderment at the position of the French Foreign Ministry, which has opted to simply ignore an obvious fact of discrimination against journalists due to their ethnicity and did not think it necessary to, at the very least, offer an official apology to the Russian side. The Russian Union of Journalists considers such an approach to this situation as unprofessional, which likely stems from an unwillingness to be held accountable for their own actions," the RUJ said in a statement posted on its website.

The RUJ recalled that this was not the first time that the French authorities had deliberately hampered the work of Russian journalists. Moreover, it noted that, "11 French journalists are accredited in Russia and all of them are allowed to attend any official event."