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AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin and RT Editor Margarita Simonyan in 2015.
In a statement released on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Australian Federal Police was investigating the Australian media. Moscow "reserves the right to take retaliatory measures whenever the rights of Russian journalists are violated" and threatened with "tit-for-tat" measures.
She did not detail what retaliatory measures Moscow might undertake. But the threats seem to be based on an embarrassing misunderstanding of the Russian government and Russia Today, better known as RT.
AFP confirmed Friday at Fairfax Media that it was not investigating RT. as propaganda spokesperson of the government of President Vladimir Putin.
RT is a 24-hour cable news channel and an important Internet site. In addition to being available online in Australia, it is broadcast by Foxtel and some satellite channels as well as community TV channels.
Zakharova's statement refers to a report in The Australian last Saturday that AFP had started a handful of preliminary inquiries. investigations under Australia's new laws on foreign interference. He did not state that RT was the target of any of these investigations, but he referred to a separate mechanism – recently adopted by Parliament – which will require the agents of foreign governments including potentially RT, to register on a list.
This was followed by a tweet from the editor of RT, Margarita Simonyan, that the outlet was under investigation and complained that it was only "we are RT"
Simonyan and the Russian government seemed to have confusion of Australian foreign interference law with the new transparency register of foreign influence.
The Russian Embassy in Canberra also tweeted on Friday morning "we are watching closely the recent developments regarding the opening by @AusFedPolice of a preliminary inquiry against @RT_com"
In his statement, Zakharova said that "if media reports are confirmed, this would be yet another example of so-called solidarity".
"Unfortunately, this has become all too common with Australia following the footsteps of the United States and Britain in trying to repel Russian media out of the international media space", was she said: "All initiatives to this effect follow the same pattern.We understand very well where the decisions to launch campaigns of this type and how they are conducted on the ground."
The tensions between Canberra and Moscow have recently increased because of persistent calls from the Turnbull government for the Kremlin to take responsibility for the bombing of the MH17 flight in which 38 Australian citizens and residents were killed and Canberra's support for sanctions against the Putin government after the attack of poisoning in Britain against the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia
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