Russia’s Foreign Ministry sought to play down the weekend deportation from Moscow of a reporter for the U.K.’s Guardian, calling it a paperwork problem, but the British newspaper dismissed the explanation, The Wall Street Journal reports. Luke Harding, who had often been critical of the Kremlin in his articles as the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent since 2007, was denied entry by Russian officials on Saturday and returned to London without explanation. The Guardian denounced the move as Cold War-style press pressure on the foreign media. U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague raised the case in a phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Monday, but got no immediate explanation, officials on both sides said.
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