Russian officials will take measures against media outlets getting support from the U.S. if pressure on the Russian mass media working in America continues to mount, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on September 28, 2017.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman commented on the requirement the U.S. authorities imposed on RT America TV channel to register the company as a foreign agent.

According to Ms. Zakharova, a huge number of Russian-language media outlets get financial support from the U.S., but hide their sources of financing to circumvent the obligation of registering as foreign agents in Russia.

“Whenever we have fights without rules, when the law is perverted and when it turns into the tool of destroying television channels, each step taken against Russian media will not go unanswered. Washington should figure out carefully who the target of this response might be. The clock is ticking,” the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry noted.

Ms. Zakharova emphasized that Russia is committed to all international norms regarding the freedom of speech. She noted that the requirements that the U.S. authorities are imposing on RT and the Sputnik news agency contradict those principles.

“The selective and clearly politically-motivated application of law to Russian media would imply a restriction of the freedom of speech, a freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.”

The application of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to RT is bound to lead to serious legal consequences and pose risks to the security of the channel’s employees. “The obligation to disclose the channel’s corporate data, including the listing of staff and the employees’ personal information, may constitute an actual threat in the current witch-hunt climate that has taken hold in the United States,” Ms. Zakharova added.

The U.S. House of Representatives is now considering a bill to change the FARA registration requirements. The new legislative measure would grant the U.S. Justice Department additional powers to pursue organizations that try to influence the political process in the United States.

Previously, three Democratic congressmen wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission calling for an investigation into Radio Sputnik’s alleged interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential elections. Russian officials pointed out that Sputnik began broadcasting in Washington, D.C. on July 1, 2017, months after the U.S. elections were over in November 2016.