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General Views of BBC Broadcasting House
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 25: The logo for the Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC is displayed outside on July 25, 2015 in London, England. The main Art Deco-style building of the British Broadcasting Corporation was officially opened on 15 May 1932 and has since seen extensive refurbishment with an extension to the main building completed in 2005. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)
Russia has instructed a BBC journalist working in Moscow to leave the country by the end of the month in retribution for what it calls London's discrimination against Russian journalists working in the UK.
The Rossiya-24 TV station said that Sarah Rainsford, one of the British broadcaster's two English-language Moscow journalists, will be returning home in "a landmark deportation," signaling a further deterioration in already strained ties between London and Moscow.
Russia says BBC ignores warnings
The move, which amounts to a de facto expulsion, comes ahead of a crackdown on Russian-language media in the country ahead of legislative elections in September, which the authorities believe is backed by hostile foreign forces seeking to foment trouble.
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson claimed the BBC ignored "repeated warnings" that it may face reprisal for pressure on Russian journalists in the UK, but she did not confirm the expulsion. The tone of a state television report on Thursday evening didn't leave much to the interpretation. However, Russia was intensifying its conflict with Western press organizations, as per NY Times.
"Sarah Rainsford is returning to her hometown. According to our experts, this BBC Moscow bureau correspondent's visa will not be extended because the United Kingdom has crossed all red lines in terms of media," intoned a reporter from the state-run news station Rossiya-24.
The report said Rainsford, a veteran journalist who first arrived in Moscow in 2000, would be compelled to leave Russia by the end of the month. It called the action "our symmetric response" to what it called Britain's "discrimination" against Russian journalists working for state-run media sites like RT and Sputnik.
According to the statement, the decision was in retaliation to London's reluctance to renew or provide visas to Russian journalists in the UK. The station criticized the UK's treatment of state-owned Russian broadcaster RT and online state news source Sputnik, claiming that neither could be accredited to cover international events in the UK.
BBC condemns Russia's move to expel its senior journalist
The BBC's director-general, Tim Davie, described her dismissal as "a blatant assault on media freedom, which we condemn unreservedly." A request for comment from Rainsford was not responded to. Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry (MFA) said, BBC reporters visited the ministry recently and were given a thorough explanation of the situation, Reuters reported.
Zakharova said that Moscow had repeatedly warned London that it would retaliate against what she described as visa-related harassment of Russian journalists in the United Kingdom. Rainsford is part of a team that provides material about Russia and the former Soviet Union to the British public service broadcaster's English-language channels. In Moscow, the BBC also has a major Russian-language service.
Following the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom in 2018, relations between Russia and the United Kingdom have remained extremely tense. It was a nerve agent assault using a Soviet design that British investigators say was probably definitely approved at a high level of the Russian government - an assertion Moscow rejects.
Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the direction of the British destroyer HMS Defender to drive it away from a region near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial seas in a June incident that further inflamed ties.
The United Kingdom, which, like most other countries, does not recognize Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, claimed that the Royal Navy ship was not attacked and that it was traveling in Ukrainian seas. Per Daily Mail, the event was portrayed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a provocation, and Moscow warned that if invading vessels did not heed warnings, the military would fire at them.
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