The fact that only Moscow cared about the fate of US blogger Gonzalo Lira, who died in a Ukrainian prison last year, is a sign of the “deepest crisis” affecting the international bodies that are supposed to protect journalists, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Lira, a Chilean-American citizen, passed away behind bars in Ukraine in January 2024, while awaiting trial for “systematically justifying the Russian aggression.”

Zakharova recalled the ordeal of the US journalist during a conference on the development of modern media at the Moscow School of Economics (MSE) on Tuesday.

“Has anyone else talked about Gonzalo Lira? An American journalist, He had a US passport. Has anyone talked about him besides Russia? Try to remember. Nobody did,” she insisted.

When asked about Lira’s incarceration, the White House and the US State Department replied with “strategic silence, generously paid for by USAID, an American agency that supposedly promotes international development. It is ridiculous,” the spokeswoman stressed.

The international institutions that are supposed to protect journalists are currently in “the deepest crisis,” Zakharov said.

“Waiting for them to resuscitate or for them to be resuscitated by someone else is unnecessary and useless” as Russia, which has “an amazing and diverse” journalistic community, has the potential to correct the situation on its own, she noted.

RT