In August 2021 Sarah Rainsford flew back to Moscow from a reporting trip in Belarus. After a mysterious wait at passport control, a border guard approached. He produced a piece of paper. Reading with a “solemn air that was almost theatrical”, he intoned: “Sarah Elizabeth, you are banned from entering Russia as a threat to national security.”
Rainsford, the BBC’s Russia correspondent, was being expelled. After some hours at Sheremetyevo airport she was allowed to enter the country. Foreign ministry officials, however, soon made clear her reprieve was temporary. They told her she was being kicked out for good. It was, they said, a “mirror response” after the UK government refused to renew the journalist visa of a suspected Kremlin spy in London.
