Macron Denies Access to 2 Russian Media Outlets in French Campaign
By BENOÎT MORENNEAPRIL 28, 2017
PARIS — The campaign of the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron confirmed on Friday
that it had denied the pro-Kremlin media outlets Sputnik and Russia Today accreditations to cover the rest of his campaign.
On Sunday, after it became clear that Mr. Macron and Marine Le Pen would face each other
in the election runoff on May 7, the news media descended on Macron headquarters.
The decision to bar the Russian outlets came on the heels of a report by the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro
that Russian operatives had targeted Mr. Macron’s campaign.
In February, Richard Ferrand, the secretary general of Mr. Macron’s movement En Marche!, or Onward!, warned
that the campaign’s databases and websites had been hit by "hundreds, if not thousands," of attacks from inside Russia.
Mr. Macron, after some wavering, adopted the European Union’s position
that sanctions could not be lifted until the Minsk agreements, which aimed to resolve the Ukraine crisis, had been fully implemented.
Le Pen, whose earlier presidential bids have been partly financed by Russian loans, has supported lifting sanctions against Moscow
that were imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.