The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation explained that the action was taken in response to the extensive U.S. sanctions aimed at Russian citizens allegedly supporting the “Kremlin and its special military operations.”
Among those banned are individuals from executive branches, the business community, media, and academia. They were targeted for their involvement in “hostile attacks or dissemination of fabrications and blatant slander about Russia’s foreign and domestic policies.”
The list includes the co-founder and publisher of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Drew Sullivan.
Russian authorities claim that the sanctioned Americans were “involved in the development, implementation, and justification of the anti-Russian course of the current U.S. administration,” with some of them “directly involved in anti-Russian actions.”
"This is political payback. OCCRP actually works hard to serve its Russian readers," Sullivan said. "We're clearly more passionate about giving them the truth than their own government."
Moscow has so far banned more than 2,000 Americans from entering Russia in response to waves of U.S. sanctions against Russian individuals and companies.
