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