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Two more Western news outlets announced on Saturday that they are suspending their operations inside Russia, following the passage of a new law that imposes fines and criminal sanctions for publishing “fake news” about the invasion of Ukraine.

German broadcasters ARD and ZDF have joined the BBC, CNN and other news outlets in closing their Russian offices after President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday that carries up to 15 years in prison for news about the country’s military that is deemed false.

Russia, which is widely seen to have lost narrative wars in the first week of the war against the Ukrainian government, also blocked social media sites like Twitter and Facebook on Friday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Saturday that the new media laws were justified by the “information warfare launched against our country,” according to the official Tass news service.

The official Russian line is that the 10-day war was a limited military offensive to protect the pro-Russian separatists fighting Kiev, with very few civilians killed in the fighting.

But UN human rights officials said on Saturday they had confirmed that 351 Ukrainian civilians had died in the fighting. The Ukrainian government gave a much higher number of deaths.

Mr. Peskov also said that despite a deterioration in relations with the US and the West, Mr. Putin’s government still “maintains certain channels of dialogue with the United States”.

The Biden administration is still open to diplomacy to end the crisis, but only if Russian forces withdraw, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels on Thursday, during a tour of NATO countries that are at the forefront of the fighting in Eastern Europe this weekend. told. back.

“We’re keeping the door open for a diplomatic path forward,” said Mr Blinken. It will be very difficult for this to happen without reducing military tensions. Diplomacy is much harder to succeed when guns are firing, tanks are rolling, planes are flying.”