“What I find so interesting about all this is that when it comes to any other country, if it's the United Kingdom, if it's Israel, if it's Canada or wherever, foreign influence is completely fine,” US journalist and political commentator Jackson Hinkle told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, commenting on the US intensifying its repressive crackdown on figures connected to Russian media. “In fact, for the United States, foreign influence is fine when we're doing it abroad to countries all over the world. We can fund foreign media in Latin America and Africa and Asia or Europe.”

“We can topple governments. We can kill sovereign presidents of sovereign countries. But for a media company to be reporting on the facts of the matter about what's actually going on in the world, and then for the United States to sanction them, it's absolutely insane,” said Hinkle.

“I think millions of Americans want to hear that truth, and that's why they're going after companies like Sputnik so hard right now,” he concluded, adding that Americans would continue to support “people that are trying to expose the lies of the US government.”

“These broad sanctions against a media group, which receives its funding from its government similar to the way the US’s PBS and VOA media companies do, are both idiotic and hypocritical,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “It isn’t election interference exactly that worries the [US government]. It is the reporting from these Russian outlets that counters, often very truthfully and compellingly, the US narrative, particularly relating to Europe and the Middle East."

“Too much attention and information about how those wars are progressing, being funded, and the kinds of things our allies in Kiev and West Jerusalem are doing in the conduct of those wars does not make the incumbent party of the White House popular, and they wish to stop Americans from asking uncomfortable questions,” she concluded.

“Sanctioning information outlets is popular in authoritarian countries, but sanctions in general only attract attention to poor political decision-making and political fear and are easily worked around.”

“It's incredible to see how the West is continuing to ignore a new multipolar world that is arising,” Pacini told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “These reactions by Western countries are pretty ridiculous because they're like trying to force the other countries of the world to follow a kind of hegemony that is falling.”

“I think this will be like a boomerang coming back to them again and new sanctions will mean new problems for all the Western countries,” he claimed.

"The actions by the Department of the Treasury in levying new sanctions against RT, Sputnik, and other Russian media organizations has made it impossible for me to continue my work as an outside contributor for RT and Sputnik, as well as participating in interviews and other collaborations with other Russian media," the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer posted on social media.

"I am deeply grateful for the professionalism of all of my Russian colleagues over the past several years, and am proud to have made their acquaintance," Ritter concluded, saying that he regrets "the actions of [the US] government in silencing legitimate journalistic outlets."

"I would also like the government to think about building nuclear power plants in the Russian Far East. This plan should take into account both the current needs as well as the needs we anticipate in future among businesses and our citizens. And, of course, it should take into account the long term," Putin said.

"We see that business ties, trade routes are reorienting to the East and the Global South. Our Far Eastern regions provide direct gateway to these promising and developing markets and allow us to overcome the barriers that some Western elites are trying to impose on the world," the Russian leader said at the plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).