The head of the Russian news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, announced on Tuesday that she had been barred from entering the territory of Armenia along with an important Russian parliamentarian, Reuters and Agerpres reported on Wednesday.

“Kostyantyn Zatulin, who has been an ardent supporter of Armenia for many years, was banned from entering Armenia by the current leader of Armenia. Me too, by the way,” Simonyan wrote in her Telegram channel.

The Armenian press writes that Zatulin, who heads the State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) committee on relations with former Soviet states, was banned from entering Armenia because of his criticism of the government led by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Simonyan, an ethnic Armenian who was born in Russia, often appears on Moscow television as a vehemently anti-Western commentator.

For example, in a May intervention on “Russia-1”, she said that young Russians who go to study in the West will go straight to hell, and that parents should be happy if the sanctions imposed by Western countries do not allow their children to study abroad.

Armenia’s ban on her may be related to the fact that Simonyan, who studied in the West thanks to a program funded by the US State Department, often accused the government in Yerevan of insufficient loyalty to Russia.

On Tuesday night, she said she was “obliged” to forgive Anton Krasovsky, the director of the Russia Today TV channel she runs, after he said Ukrainian children should be drowned or thrown into fires.

On February 27, the EU banned the Russian propaganda channels Russia Today and Sputnik.

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