Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday held a regular briefing while wearing a vest jacket designed in the corporate colors of the Sputnik news agency, thereby joined a photo trend that was started to support Sputnik Estonia journalists who are being threatened with criminal prosecution
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th December, 2019) Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Thursday held a regular briefing while wearing a vest jacket designed in the corporate colors of the Sputnik news agency, thereby joined a photo trend that was started to support Sputnik Estonia journalists who are being threatened with criminal prosecution.On December 18, the Rossiya Segodnya news agency said that employees of Sputnik Estonia had received letters from the Baltic country's Police and Border Guard board that warned they would face criminal prosecution unless they severed their ties with the Moscow-based parent news agency by January 1. The Estonian authorities cited the 2014 EU sanctions as a pretext for potential legal action. Rossiya Segodnya has insisted that is not mentioned in any EU sanctions lists.
In light of these developments, Rossiya Segodnya's executive director, Kirill Vyshinsky, has started a photo trend under the hashtag #СпутникСила (Sputnik strong) to support Sputnik Estonia. In a video clip, Vyshinsky symbolically lifted a kettlebell of the Sputnik news agency's corporate orange color and promised that Russia would support Sputnik Estonia employees.
On December 19, during his annual end-of-year press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would do everything to support the media outlet's work abroad. He also added that it was important to continue to work in countries that are afraid of the media's "influence on the minds of people."
A high-profile source told Sputnik earlier in the day that the Estonian authorities' oppression of Sputnik Estonia was initiated by UK "curators."
