CEM REPORT, INTERNATIONAL | In what seems like a response to the regularly anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the Joe Biden administration Russia has banned “500 Americans” from entering the country.
The list which includes Obama, former US Ambassador Jon Huntsman, several US senators and the next expected chairman of the joint chiefs Charles Q. Brown Jr was released by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday.
The list also includes American media personnel, including CNN Anchor Erin Burnett and is an update of a previously published longer list of sanctioned individuals that includes CNN’s Chief International Security Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, Senior Global Affairs Analyst Bianna Golodryga and CNN contributor Timothy Naftali.
The ministry justified the bans in a statement on its website that read: “It is high time for Washington to learn that not a single hostile attack against Russia will go without a strong reaction.”
The charges against each individual were not specified, and it was not made clear what the consequences would entail beyond an exclusion from the country.
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Additionally, the ministry stated that it is still refusing American journalist Evan Gershkovich’s request for consular access from the US embassy “due to the failure to issue visas to Russian journalists from the Lavrov pool,” an apparent reference to the April visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the US.
