dmitry preskov
© Pavel Bednyakov / SputnikFILE PHOTO: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov speaks to journalists in Moscow, April 24, 2023. Kremlin says its conditions for extending deal brokered by the UN and Turkey had not been fulfilled.
Dealing with people who won't tell the truth is pointless, presidential spokesman Peskov has said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov stopped giving interviews to Western outlets a year ago because they distorted his words every time, he revealed on Wednesday.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Bosnian Serb outlet ATV, Peskov was asked why major Western outlets such as AP only had archive photos or video of him. He explained that he cut them off because "they would not tell the truth."

"We gave several interviews, but they distorted everything, changed the meaning of things," the presidential spokesman explained. "Perhaps some journalists want to tell the truth, but their editors will not allow it." So the Kremlin agreed that further contacts with Western media were pointless.

"I made a decision: until I see the Western media showing at least some interest in the truth, we will not communicate with them," Peskov told ATV. "As for my photo, one is enough - why would they need more?"

Putin's spokesman also touched on the fact that the West has censored Russian media outlets and even individual journalists, in total betrayal of its own principle of press freedom.

"The collective West long enjoyed a media monopoly," Peskov told ATV, pointing to the English-language media having the biggest footprint in the world, from newspapers and TV to news agencies.

"To suddenly break that monopoly is impossible," he explained. "But when we tried to compete with them a little, they immediately became hysterical. They tore off all masks right away and showed there is no freedom of the press over there. The moment any outlets became 'uncomfortable' to them, the moment they started presenting viewpoints different from their mainstream, they were banned."

Last March, the EU banned all Russian 'state media,' from RT and Sputnik to public broadcaster VGTRK, and persuaded YouTube to enforce that ban globally. Canada has banned RT, while Germany and France froze RT accounts in their countries, forcing the local outlets to close.

"They sanction journalists. That seemed unthinkable 10 years ago," Peskov told ATV. "There is no freedom of speech there. If you don't think like them, you get sanctioned."