On July 13, Barclays announced the closure, without any explanation, of the bank accounts of Rossiya Segodnya's London bureau. The following day, the bank said that the accounts had not been closed but had instead been frozen, and pointed out that Rossiya Segodnya General Director Dmitry Kiselev features on the list of sanctioned Russian individuals, imposed by the European Union in relation to the Ukrainian conflict.
"Anti-Russia sanctions over Ukraine are somehow applied against our mass media. Although the British side denies any involvement in the bank's decision, the matter got lost somewhere between the bank and the British Ministry of Finance," the diplomat said.
He stressed that imposing sanctions on the media amounted to "censorship and an attempt to silence them, due to a lack of arguments in support of their own position."
Kiselev has also strongly criticized the British authorities' move, labeling it censorship and direct interference in the work of alternative journalism.
