France threatens Russia with consequences for revoking accreditation of a French journalist

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed outrage at Russia’s decision to revoke the accreditation of Le Monde’s Moscow correspondent Benjamin Quénelle.

A representative of the French Foreign Ministry said this at a briefing on Thursday, February 6.

The French Foreign Ministry emphasized that Le Monde, one of the leading French publications, will not have a correspondent in Moscow for the first time since 1957.

“This unreasonable and arbitrary decision by the Russian authorities is yet another obstacle to freedom of information at a time when the working conditions of independent Russian and foreign journalists in Russia are already extremely poor and press freedom is not respected,” the French ministry stated.

Paris called on the Russian authorities to reconsider their decision, “which will otherwise require an appropriate response,” without specifying what this might mean.

Le Monde editorial director Jerome Fenoglio, in a column published in French and Russian, called Moscow’s decision “unprecedented.”

He emphasized that Russia’s explanation—that Quénelle’s accreditation was revoked because Paris refused to accredit propagandists from Komsomolskaya Pravda—is groundless because they are not journalists but agents of the Russian special services.

“As the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated in its exchanges with French diplomacy, this ban on working in the country is a retaliatory measure following Paris’s refusal to issue press visas to alleged journalists from the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, reputedly close to the Kremlin. According to the Quai d’Orsay, the names put forward by Moscow were not those of journalists, but of agents of the Russian intelligence services.”

“We urge the Russian authorities to reverse this decision, which was dictated by considerations that have nothing to do with our title. Furthermore, we assure our readers of our absolute determination to continue to follow, with Benjamin Quénelle and the entire International department, the political, economic and social news of Russia, which it is more important than ever to illuminate with reliable, in-depth and independent information,” the editor wrote.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has launched a campaign to suppress freedom of speech and imprisoned several Russian and foreign journalists.

In March 2023, Moscow detained American journalist Evan Hershkovich and then sentenced him to 16 years in prison on “espionage” charges that Washington called trumped-up.

The Wall Street Journal journalist was released in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner exchange between the East and West since the fall of the Iron Curtain.