QUICK TAKE: Peskov defends press freedom for RT France; the Kremlin holds 36 journalists

Two lists

Brussels, September 24

There is a list in Brussels. On September 24, 2026, the Council of the European Union adds a name to it, the 81st: Xenia Fedorova, former head of RT France.

There is a list at Reporters Without Borders. In Russia, it counts 36 journalists and 14 media workers in detention.

There is one word between the two. On September 25, in Moscow, Dmitry Peskov says it: persecution.

Two kinds of treatment

On the first list, assets get frozen.

On the second, there are prison sentences.

A cell door closes with a sound nobody transcribes. An asset freeze fits in an annex of the Official Journal.

Two lists, then. One published in the Official Journal, with grounds and dates. The other kept by an NGO, with names missing from the September 25 briefing.

The Kremlin chose its word. It’s time to hand it back.

Two lists, one word, and not the same weight.

Friday, at the Kremlin

The September 25 briefing

On September 25, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesman, holds his briefing. TASS publishes the highlights.

On Fedorova, he moves fast.

He calls the sanctions illegal, and notes they aren’t the first. He talks about blatant pressure on the media. He talks about persecution of media representatives. He talks about the suppression of all dissent in the country. He talks, finally, about France, and the practices its authorities allow themselves.

Five charges. None about Russia.

The same briefing then moves on to Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian envoy visiting the United States, and to a possible three-way meeting with Kyiv and Washington. Persecution fits between two diplomatic items.

The country he describes

Reread the fourth charge.

The suppression of all dissent in the country.

The Kremlin spokesman is talking about France.

And yet the sentence carries a return address.

Peskov describes a country. He has the wrong capital.

Who Xenia Fedorova is

At RT since 2005

The Council’s legal act describes her without adjectives.

Born December 26, 1980, Russian national. Joined RT in 2005. Head of Ruptly, RT’s Berlin-based video agency, from 2015 to 2017. President and editor-in-chief of RT France from 2017 to 2022.

Since 2025, a regular commentator on CNews, Europe 1 and the JDNews, according to the same text.

She is 45, France 24 notes.

The act adds that French authorities had publicly identified her as a relay for Kremlin disinformation.

Late July, the expulsion

In late July, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez signs an expulsion order. Her presence would pose a serious and immediate threat to public order, according to the order as cited by Euronews.

She loses her appeal. She is expelled in August, France 24 writes.

On September 24, the Union adds her to its list, on a joint proposal from Paris and Berlin, according to Euronews.

A career at RT, then a microphone at Bolloré’s outlets.

Paris did not go easy

The July 14 parade

What France did, and in what order, also has to be said.

Her comments on the July 14 military parade had already drawn official reactions from the French foreign ministry and from minister Jean-Noël Barrot, Euronews reported on August 1.

Then comes the expulsion order. According to Libération, cited by BFMTV, it states that her conduct harms the fundamental interests of the state.

As soon as she is notified, she is placed under house arrest and must report to the police station every day, according to Euronews.

Two appeals, two refusals

On August 3, the Paris administrative court rejects her emergency petition. On August 14, it rejects her request for a suspension. Each time for lack of urgency, without ruling on the merits, Sud Radio reported.

Her lawyer, Emmanuel Piwnica, announces an appeal to the Council of State, France’s top administrative court.

House arrest. Expulsion. Freeze. France hit hard.

And yet at every French step, there was a judge at the end of the hallway.

The hand was heavy. It was signed, dated, open to challenge.

One account, 36 detainees

Fifty media workers

I’ll say it straight out.

This piece stands with the 36 journalists held in Russia, against Dmitry Peskov’s complaint of September 25. Because the Kremlin can’t cry persecution over a former RT executive while RSF counts 50 media workers held in its own country.

Brussels freezes an account. Moscow counts its detainees.

A former boss isn’t a detainee

I’m not saying you have to like what Fedorova says to grant her rights. She has them. She uses them.

Nor do I confuse a former RT boss with the journalists Russia is holding. One ran a state channel’s French arm. The others are behind Russian bars.

No conflation. Just a mirror.

A freeze, not a sentence

What the sanction does

Let’s look at the mechanics, without drama.

The listing freezes her assets in the Union. It bars European citizens and companies from making funds available to her. It closes the Union’s territory to her, according to Euronews.

The act is Implementing Regulation 2026/2165. It was signed in Brussels on September 24, for the Council, by its president, P. Burke. It enters into force on the day of its publication in the Official Journal.

What it doesn’t do

The sanction doesn’t lock her up. It doesn’t sentence her to anything. It doesn’t take away her voice.

She still has a lawyer. She still has judges, who told her no twice in August. She still has an announced appeal to the Council of State.

Judges who say no. But judges.

A frozen account silences no one.

Canal+ and Lagardère

July 29

The strongest objection doesn’t come from the Kremlin. It comes from Paris.

On July 29, Canal+ and Lagardère, which employ Fedorova on CNews, Europe 1 and the JDNews, issue a joint statement. They give her their full support.

They write that freedom of expression isn’t something you defend only when the opinions expressed enjoy consensus. They denounce the risk of a particularly serious blow to freedom of expression and to pluralism of opinion.

They say they are stunned. Keeping her out of the public debate on France and the world would, in their view, be an especially grave violation.

That’s the right sentence. I’d sign it for anyone.

Pluralism, back in June

One detail, reported by BFMTV the same day: in June, Arcom, France’s media regulator, had formally ordered CNews to better respect the diversity of opinions, finding that a single current of thought dominated the channel. CNews had contested it.

Pluralism, invoked in July by those who were called to order over it in June.

And yet the objection holds in principle. So it has to be answered with facts, not a shrug.

A good sentence doesn’t pick who says it.

The October 8, 2024 regime

A framework, not a special law

The framework wasn’t invented for her.

In its recitals, the act recalls that the Union condemns without reservation Russia’s malicious activities against the Union, its member states, international organizations and third countries.

The European regulation targeting Russia’s destabilizing activities dates from October 8, 2024, the September 24 act notes.

On June 18 and 19, 2026, the European Council condemned recent hybrid attacks against the Union, naming Russia and Belarus among the hostile actors, according to the same act.

With Fedorova, the regime now covers 81 people and 20 entities, according to the Council’s press release as relayed by the EU Neighbours East program.

The 2027 elections

The Kyiv Independent places the decision on a calendar: elections in France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Greece in 2027.

One commentator. Eighty-one names. Five elections ahead.

The Council isn’t sanctioning a newspaper. It is sanctioning a role, described in a few paragraphs, with dates.

A 2024 framework, a 2026 name.

Moscow, 172nd out of 180

The ranking

First fact. RSF’s World Press Freedom Index puts Russia in 172nd place out of 180, with a score of 23.15. It was 171st in 2025. It is still slipping.

Since February 2022, RSF writes, almost all independent Russian media have been banned, blocked or labelled. Nearly two thirds of Russians get their news from state television and from VKontakte.

To intimidate, RSF lists heavy sentences, torture in the regions, fines, arbitrary detention.

In Russia, 36 journalists are behind bars. In Russia, 14 media workers are held too. In Russia, spreading what the law calls false information about the armed forces is punishable by up to 15 years in prison, since amendments passed at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, RSF recalls.

Foreign agent, undesirable

RSF also describes two labels. Foreign agent status comes with heavy administrative burdens and legal risks. Undesirable organization status criminalizes any mention or cooperation, as with Meduza and TV Rain.

RSF adds that Western media such as Euronews, France 24 and the BBC are inaccessible there. France 24, which reported Fedorova’s sanction on September 24, can’t be read in Moscow.

Many journalists have chosen exile, RSF also writes. The authorities then pressure their families, or convict them in absentia.

That is the country which, according to its spokesman, knows persecution when it sees it.

Fifteen years for a sentence about the army. An asset freeze for a career at RT.

The Kremlin knows persecution. It keeps the register.

81, already

June 25, 2024

Second fact, and it has a date.

On June 25, 2024, Russia’s Foreign Ministry blocked access in Russia to 81 media outlets from the European Union, from 25 European countries, Al Jazeera reported.

France was hit hardest, with nine outlets. Agence France-Presse. Le Monde. Libération.

The others carry familiar names. Der Spiegel. El País. Italy’s RAI. Finland’s Yle. Ireland’s RTE.

The grounds Moscow gave: systematic spreading of false information about the course of the war in Ukraine.

The trigger, in May 2024: the Union had banned four outlets, Voice of Europe, the RIA agency, and the newspapers Izvestia and Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which it tied to Kremlin-linked propaganda networks.

Four in May. Eighty-one in June.

The same grounds, turned around

Eighty-one outlets cut off at once, in retaliation. Not an asset freeze on one person. Eighty-one newsrooms wiped off Russian screens.

And the grounds, in 2024, were the ones Moscow calls illegal when Brussels uses them: false information.

Eighty-one in 2024. The 81st name on the European list in 2026. Chance has a sense of humour.

Eighty-one newsrooms cut off, and not a word about persecution.

The fine line

Opinions in the legal act

Now, what cuts against my side.

Among the Council’s grounds, some are matters of opinion. Presenting European support for Ukraine as a factor prolonging the war is an argument. A detestable one, maybe. But an argument.

A democracy that freezes assets over an argument takes a risk. It hands the Kremlin the word it is looking for.

Another detail that costs. The Council’s act itself describes her as an author, journalist and commentator. So Brussels is sanctioning someone it calls a journalist.

That’s the line Peskov could have quoted. He didn’t.

September 10, CNews

There’s something heavier. On September 10, according to Euronews, Laurent Nuñez warned CNews that the channel could face criminal penalties if Fedorova appeared on air from abroad.

Threatening a channel over an expelled voice is walking a fine line. I write it because it’s true.

It’s true. And it doesn’t change this: no French judge has sentenced Fedorova to prison, and Russia holds 36 journalists.

The line is fine. The Kremlin erased it.

The children

What the act says

There is one line in the Council’s act that isn’t an opinion.

Fedorova called into question established facts about the unlawful transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children, the Council writes.

Children.

March 17, 2023

On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights.

The Court suspects them of the war crime of unlawful deportation and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, since at least February 24, 2022.

The Court chose to make the warrants public because, in its view, the conduct was ongoing, and public awareness could help prevent it.

This isn’t an argument about NATO. It’s an ICC case file.

A child taken away doesn’t come back because a TV panel debated it. A bedroom stays empty. A bed stays made.

Denying that on air isn’t offering an opinion. It is erasing them a second time.

On this point, there aren’t two opinions.

Zakharova calls on the UN

A promised response

On that same September 25, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova promises an appropriate response to the Russophobic moves of the countries involved, TASS reports.

She calls it an act of political censorship. She urges condemnation of intimidation against honest journalism.

She also tells a different career story. According to her, Fedorova hadn’t worked for Russian media for several years and had become a correspondent for French publications. Her offence, supposedly, was refusing to betray the ethics of the profession.

The European act tells the other version, with dates. RT from 2005 to 2022. CNews, Europe 1 and the JDNews since 2025.

The two accounts agree on the dates. They differ on what she said on air.

The UN, UNESCO, the OSCE

She asks the UN human rights office to assess the conduct of France and the Union. She asks UNESCO the same. She asks the OSCE to do likewise, in the name of free access to information.

The TASS dispatch mentions no journalist detained in Russia. Not one name. Not one number.

Those bodies can also read the RSF report. It’s public.

An appropriate response, she promises. In 2024, the response was called 81.

Moscow demands referees for everyone else.

The word persecution

In Peskov’s mouth

Back to the word.

In Peskov’s mouth, persecution means this: a former RT boss loses access to her European assets and to a country where she had lived for nearly ten years, according to her lawyer.

That’s a loss. I don’t deny it.

In RSF’s numbers

In RSF’s numbers, the same word has another face. Thirty-six journalists. Fourteen media workers. Visiting rooms, glass partitions, phones that crackle.

The same word. Two weights.

The Kremlin kept the lighter one for its press conference.

Persecution, said Peskov. He was reading the wrong list.

The word we hand them

A ready-made phrase

I’ll admit a worry. Every time a democracy sanctions a voice, even this one, it lends the Kremlin a ready-made phrase. And that phrase travels better than RSF reports.

It fits in one word. It plays on a loop. It needs no number, no date, no judge.

That’s why the measure has to stay narrow and reasoned. The September 24 measure targets one person, with its grounds spelled out in full.

A voice from Moscow

How far can a democracy go against a voice from Moscow without handing the Kremlin the word it needs?

On September 24, Brussels froze an account.

On the 25th, Peskov spoke of persecution.

In Russia, RSF still counts 36 journalists in detention.

Peskov defends a commentator. Moscow keeps its 36 journalists.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• TASS — Dmitry Peskov on the sanctions against the former RT France chief, September 25, 2026
• Council of the European Union — Implementing Regulation 2026/2165 listing Xenia Fedorova, September 24, 2026
• Reporters Without Borders — Russia country page, 2026 index and detained journalists, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• France 24 — EU sanctions Xenia Fedorova after her expulsion, September 24, 2026
• Euronews — asset freeze, entry ban and warning to CNews, September 24, 2026
• BFMTV — Canal+ and Lagardère condemn the expulsion order, July 29, 2026