I am just off a long haul flight and am greeted by a flurry of messages from colleagues and editors when I turn my phone on at the baggage carousel. I have made the list. The List. The list that Russia has composed of people who they claim have a Russophobic agenda and are now banned from entering the Russian Federation, indefinitely.
Given I am the Europe Correspondent for The Australian and have been writing about the war in Ukraine since February, interviewing those on the front line and those who have escaped the war time horrors, I am not surprised my name has ended up on someone’s desk, nor the name of the paper’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan.
How do I feel about this? I would have been truly upset not to have been sanctioned.
The 120 Australian names are revealing about what – or who – Russian officials think are spreading “false information” about Russia.
The editor in chief of The Australian, Chris Dore is on the list, so too the co-chairman of News Corp, Lachlan Murdoch and another director Prudence Murdoch MacLeod. The Australian’s south east Asia correspondent Amanda Hodge, online editor Dan Sankey, columnist Peter Hoysted and the sports columnist Will Swanton are also sanctioned.
The list of those sanctioned is bordering on haphazard, almost random. Prominent journalists who have been in Ukraine almost since the war started are missing, yet others who haven’t been anywhere near Kyiv have been catalogued and banned.
Business executives Gina Rinehart, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew Forrest, Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes, and South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas are listed.
In effect, no journalists can get into Russia at the moment and for the past decade the Russian foreign ministry has been highly reluctant to issue any journalist visas to western press.
The only way I have been able to report from inside Russia, and both times I was pleasantly delighted by the Russian people, was to cover the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
The Russian foreign ministry said it had sanctioned the 120 Australian citizens, including journalists and defence officials citing retaliation for the increasing number of Russian citizens officials and family members, the business community and the media being caught up in the tightening sanction of the Australian government.
The foreign ministry added that it will continue to update its “stop list” because Canberra doesn’t seem inclined to abandon its anti Russia policy line.
I know some colleagues who have turned to the vodka bottle, furious their work in Ukraine hasn’t been noticed by the Russians. Maybe they will make the next tranche.
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