Former President Barack Obama has been formally banned from setting foot on Russian soil, one of the names included on a list of 500 Americans whose entry to the country has been blocked in a retaliatory measure for U.S. sanctions that have been imposed over the ongoing NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
In a Friday press release posted to its website, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry announced the bans while not providing the specific reason why each individual was included but that the list was “a response to the regularly anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the Joe Biden administration,”
“It is high time for Washington to learn that not a single hostile attack against Russia will be left without a strong reaction,” the post states. “The principle of the inevitability of punishment will be consistently applied, whether we are talking about tougher sanctions pressure or discriminatory steps to hinder the professional activities of our fellow citizens.”
The nation’s 44th president was the highest profile name on the list which also included various other government officials and members of Congress from both parties as well as late-night television hosts and left-wing media personalities like MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who has been one of the leading promoters of the discredited Russia collusion hoax.
Also among those prohibited from visiting Russia are late-night Democratic Party mouthpieces Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Myers, former NBC/MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, CNN Chief International Security Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, and CNN anchor Erin Burnett who recently mixed it up with former President Donald J. Trump at a New Hampshire town hall broadcast in primetime by the cable news network.
Others banned by the Russians are Senators J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and Eric Schmidtt (R-Mo.) as well as nearly four dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives, former U.S. ambassadors to Russia John Tefft and Jon Hunstman and for some reason, New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James who has abused her office to pursue a relentless vendetta against Trump.
The statement cites the promotion of “Russophobic” sentiment, those who are complicit in the supplying of weapons to Ukraine, and those who “are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called “Capitol assault,” referring to the so-called January 6, 2021 “insurrection” after which Trump supporters who turned out to demonstrate against the 2020 election and who briefly entered the U.S. Capitol were hunted down by the federal government, with many of them being locked up inside of a special Washington, D.C. prison facility, something that would normally be the practice under totalitarian regimes, like Russia.
“People came to the U.S. Congress with political demands. 400 people, over 400 people had criminal charges placed on them…they’re being called domestic terrorists. They’re being accused of other crimes,” Russian leader Putin said at a June 2021 press conference after he met with President Joe Biden at a summit in Geneva.
“The ministry said it had also denied a U.S. request for consular access to Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in late March and charged with espionage,” AP reported. “The ministry said that was in response to the United States denying visas to Russian journalists who wanted to cover Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to the United Nations last month.”
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