MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/. France's refusal to grant visas to Izvestia correspondents should be considered discriminatory against the work of the Russian media, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
"You can and you should," the Kremlin spokesman said, responding to a question whether the denial of a visa to Izvestia reporter and his cameraman over an alleged threat to public order and internal EU security could be considered discriminatory against Russian media.
Izvestia correspondent Nikolay Ivanov and his cameraman Georgy Bekauri were planning to film a report about the French resistance movement for the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the French Embassy in Russia had twice in a row refused to issue a visa to Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist Alexander Kudela to work in Paris. Russia officially informed the French side that it would be forced to take retaliatory measures if Paris did not reconsider its decision, Zakharova stressed, adding that "the lot fell on Le Monde's permanent correspondent in Russia, Benjamin Quenelle, whose accreditation required a technical renewal" and that there was no "political subtext" in this decision.