Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP 18:00 p.m., September 18, 2023

The France ambassador to Russia, Pierre Lévy, was summoned because of the "discriminatory and manifestly Russophobic actions of representatives of the French authorities against RIA Novosti correspondents and the editor-in-chief of Russia-News at the G20 summit in New Delhi," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Russian diplomacy summoned the France ambassador to Moscow on Monday to denounce the discrimination it says Russian journalists suffer, accusing Paris of roughing up correspondents during the G20 summit in India. Ambassador Pierre Levy was summoned because of the "discriminatory and manifestly Russophobic actions of representatives of the French authorities against RIA Novosti correspondents and the editor-in-chief of Russia-News at the G20 summit in New Delhi," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

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They "were brutally denied access to a press conference of French President (Emmanuel) Macron," he added.

A full press room

Russian diplomacy has accused the France of violating "the fundamental principle of freedom of the press" and accuses it of not having apologized to the Russian journalists excluded, says Moscow, the press conference of September 10 and the French organizers of the event of having tried to seize the phones of the interested parties.

Russia denounced the incident at the G20 the same day. At the time, the French presidency made no comment but a member of the delegation refuted accusations of discrimination and brutality. "We had to refuse about thirty journalists of all nationalities for lack of space in the room," said the source, who did not wish to be identified. An AFP correspondent present at the press conference noted that the press room was full and that journalists had not been able to access it.

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Russia has long accused the France of attacking representatives of its media, especially because the Elysee refused to accredit the RT television channel for peddling rumors about Emmanuel Macron. In 2017, the French president, welcoming Vladimir Putin to France, had hammered that RT and the news site Sputnik were "organs of false propaganda".