MOSCOW, April 10. /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow has called on the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic, to avoid double standards and biased approaches.

“Many of her assessments are far from being objective and unbiased, taking no account of new political and legal realities,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, commenting on Mijatovic’s statement on the situation in Ukraine’s media space.

“The emphases are often put in the anti-Russian mood,” the ministry stressed. “Thus, speaking about the deterioration of situation with the freedom of speech in Ukraine, Dunja Mijatovic focuses attention on the developments that took place around the buildings of television companies in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk on April 7. But she says nothing about the fact that the actions of the protesters were triggered but the limitations of their right to receive information after the closure of Russian television channels.”

“Moreover, Ms. Mijatovich does not seem to see violations by the Kiev authorities of foreign journalists’ rights. Recently, a number of journalists, including A. Ivanov and A. Goloshchapov (RURTLY-Russia Today agency), R. Super (Ren-TV), P. Sedakov (Forbes), A. Malyshkin and A. Kudenko (RIA Novosti), M. Dodonov (Zvezda TV channel), A. Mayorov and S. Guryanov (Channel 5), A. Kolesnikov and D. Azarov (Kommersant), have been banned to enter Ukraine,” the ministry said.

“Such approaches are demonstrated not only in respect of Ukraine,” the ministry noted. “The representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also ignores instances of pressurizing the mass media in the Baltic countries. The latest example is the decision of Latvia’s National Electronic Mass Media Council to suspend re-broadcasting the Russian TV channel Russia-RTR under an obviously contrived pretext.”

“We call on Ms. Mijatovic to give an assessment to the above facts and to avoid double standards and biased approaches in her activities, as a head of a specialized institute of an international organization should do,” the ministry stressed.