Putin on Foreign Agents: You Need to Protect Yourself From Possible External Interference

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the use of the law on foreign agents helps to protect the country from possible interference from outside, this is a delicate job, and with regard to the media, actions must be very careful in order to ensure freedom of speech.

"You know how our media are treated abroad — they are declared foreign agents, they are summoned to courts, they are summoned for interrogations, they are threatened with imprisonment for failure to appear. We need to ensure freedom of speech, we need to ensure to some extent the inviolability of the people who pay attention to the flaws of our society, the imperfection of our state apparatus and system, to questions that arise during election campaigns. We only need to protect ourselves from possible interference in our internal affairs from outside," Putin said at a meeting with members of the Human Rights Council, speaking about media foreign agents.

The president added that Russia needed to protect itself from someone using any instruments within the country to achieve their goals, which have nothing to do with the interests of the state.

"Of course, this is a delicate work, and as for the media, we must act very carefully so as not to de-energize those tools that we absolutely need, without blunting them, which we must use for our own interests, for the development of our country, for the development of democratic institutions, to make our society and economy the most competitive, to move forward," Putin said.