Russian lawmakers denounce US sanctions against Russian state media network

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian lawmakers denounced as an infringement of freedom of speech U.S. punitive measures against state media group RT as part of what officials in Washington described as a campaign to influence the November presidential election.

The U.S. justice department on Wednesday filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state media network RT for what was described as a scheme to hire a U.S. company to produce online content to influence the election.

Previous U.S. intelligence assessments have found that Moscow tried to meddle in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Russian officials have suggested that the United States has also meddled in its domestic affairs.

The Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry have repeatedly said that Moscow has not meddled in the U.S. election, but is watching it closely.

Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Chairman of Russia's upper house of parliament, told RIA news agency that the U.S. moves were aimed at preventing alternative views from being made known.

"Russian media in this sense have become increasingly popular and in demand," Kosachev told RIA.

"That is the reason behind the rabid reaction of the U.S. authorities, which is totally at odds with the principles of freedom of speech and defending the rights of journalists."

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma lower house's foreign affairs committee, branded the sanctions "a witch-hunt, pressure on freedom of speech and vulgar censorship".

"The agents of the 'empire of lies' are waging war on everyone who tells the truth about the policy of contemporary neo-colonialists," said Slutsky.

There was no immediate Kremlin reaction to the sanctions.

The Kremlin in June dismissed as absurd U.S. intelligence assertions that Russia sought to meddle in the election and has said that U.S. spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy.

President Vladimir Putin had suggested in the past that, for Russia, Joe Biden would have been preferable to Donald Trump, though he spoke with irony about Biden.

Ahead of the announcement of the sanctions, Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said any suggestion of meddling in the election was nonsense. Moscow, she said, felt that the only winner of the election would be the U.S. military-industrial complex.

"The U.S. claims were and are pure rubbish and a witch hunt," Butina, who spent 15 months in U.S. prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and is now a lawmaker for the ruling United Russia party, told Reuters.

"Russia thinks it does not matter who wins the U.S. elections – the only winner is the U.S. private military-industrial complex. That is what matters – and nothing else," Butina said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia saw U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump, but said there was no prospect of an improvement in relations with Washington anyway.

(Reporting by Guy FaulconbridgeEditing by Andrew Osborn, Ron Popeski and Michael Perry)