Russia Kicks Out BBC Correspondent In Row With UK, Says State TV

Russia has told a BBC journalist working in Moscow to leave the country by the end of this month in retaliation for what it called London's discrimination against Russian journalists working in Britain, state TV reported.

Photo Insert: BBC Correspondent Sarah Rainsford during her stint in Cuba.

In an unusual move that signals a further deterioration in already poor ties between London and Moscow, the Rossiya-24 TV channel said that Sarah Rainsford, one of the British broadcaster's two English-language Moscow correspondents, would be going home in what it called "a landmark deportation," Andrew Osborn reported for Reuters.

The step, a de facto expulsion, follows a crackdown before parliamentary elections in September on Russian-language media at home whom the authorities judge to be backed by malign foreign interests intent on stoking unrest.

Rossiya-24 said Russian authorities had decided against renewing Rainsford's accreditation to work as a foreign journalist in Moscow beyond the end of this month when her existing visa expires.

The move was a response to London's refusal to renew or issue visas to Russian journalists in Britain, it said. The channel cited Britain's treatment of state-backed Russian broadcaster RT and of online state news outlet Sputnik, saying neither could get accredited in Britain to cover international events.

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