On Wednesday evening, the US Department of the Treasury issued a statement to announce sanctions against the Rossiya Segodnya media group, RIA Novosti, RT, Sputnik, and Ruptly. The US sanctions also affected RT and Rossiya Segodnya Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
"We must immediately say that this and other attacks made by the US with the involvement of the largest mainstream Western publications on Russian media are the result of carefully thought-out operations in the depths of security services to 'sterilize' the national and, in the future, global information space from any form of dissent," Zakharova said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
She said the US restrictions on Russian media indicate degradation inside the United States and its transformation into a neoliberal dictatorship, adding that such steps will not remain unanswered.
Zakharova said the new US sanctions were Russophobic and aimed against freedom of speech, calling it a "manipulation within the electoral cycle."
The Eastern Economic Forum began on Tuesday and will run through Friday. It is being hosted by the Far Eastern Federal University in the Russian Pacific coast city of Vladivostok. Sputnik is the general information partner of the EEF 2024.