MOSCOW, October 1. / TASS /: The Kremlin strongly opposes the Belarusian government’s move to restrict access to the Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper’s website, as this is a violation of media freedom, the presidential spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday.
"We strongly disagree with this. We believe that it violates freedom of the press," the Kremlin spokesman insisted.
"Of course, we expect that the Belarusian side will create a conducive environment for our media to operate in," Peskov emphasized.
Belarus shut down access to the Komsomolskaya Pravda website on Wednesday.
The country’s Ministry of Information explained this decision was taken because Komsomolskaya Pravda published information which "could pose a threat to national security." The newspaper’s editorial office said that they were figuring out the situation and expressed their readiness to eliminate the violations pointed out by state bodies.
Last year, the Russian publication was removed from the subscription catalogs and banned from being sold at newsstands. Since late August 2020, the Belarusian Printing House has stopped publishing several non-state publications, including Komsomolskaya Pravda.
