Margarita Simonyan

The information weapon, of course, is used in critical moments, and war is always a critical moment.

Our job is to tell the world about Russia and to report world news from a Russian viewpoint.

The American Justice Department has left us with no choice. Our lawyers say that if we don't register as a foreign agent, the director of our company in America could be arrested, and the accounts of the company could be seized.

Somehow it did not occur to us that, in a developed democracy, regular media advertising could turn out to be a suspicious and harmful activity.

One might have thought that Brexit would be a wake-up call for the American media. Yet, just as in the U.K. referendum, 'Russia' became the buzzword in the U.S. election that the political and media establishments thought would scare people into voting for the status quo.

There is just a small difference between the United States and Russia - Russia does not teach the whole world democracy.

We do have our mistakes sometimes, like 'The New York Times' does, like everything does. We correct them.

Not a single story on 'BBC World News' is any different from the British foreign policy.

When you read Western press, you probably get a feeling that all Russian press is censored, there's no freedom at all, we can't say whatever, which is absolutely, absolutely, completely untrue.

We congratulate American freedom of speech and all who still believe in it.

In the U.S., the country that has always been lecturing the world about the value of freedoms - of freedom of speech, of everyone's right to speak up - the U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That's so disappointing.

When we were a quiet, little-noticed channel telling stories from Russia, our audience was negligible. When we started being really provocative... our audience started to grow.