Russia blacklists 2 US journalists

While American polemicist Tucker Carlson tours Moscow ahead of a rumored interview with President Vladimir Putin, two U.S.-based journalists have been branded “extremists and terrorists” by Russian authorities.

Russian media reported Monday that writer Tom Rogan and chief editor Hugo Gurdon of the Washington Examiner had been added to a database of extremists and terrorists. Russia’s federal financial monitoring service, Rosfinmonitoring, runs the list.

The database mentions Rogan and Gurdon as U.K. nationals, but Russia’s state-run TASS news agency on Friday referred to Rogan as a U.S. citizen. POLITICO has contacted Rogan for comment.

“Be careful everyone, Tom Rogan and I are now designated extremists,” Gurdon commented ironically Monday on X, formerly Twitter.

Rogan wrote an opinion piece in 2018 in which he called on Kyiv to destroy the bridge connecting Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula across the Kerch Strait. 

“Bombing the bridge would thus be a very personal rebuke to Putin’s ambitions and his propaganda narrative,” he wrote at the time, years before Ukraine actually attacked the bridge.

Russia’s Investigative Committee subsequently launched a criminal case against him and the publication’s editor Gurdon for inciting terrorism. 

Asked whether Carlson was in Russia to interview Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier Monday that Russia did not track the “movement of foreign journalists,” but instead welcomed them.

Rosfinmonitoring also labeled 29 other people as extremists or terrorists alongside Rogan and Gurdon.

Sergey Goryashko contributed reporting.