KIEV: Ukraine faced widespread condemnation Thursday for blacklisting dozens of foreign reporters as it expanded sanctions against Russia for its actions in the war-torn former Soviet state.

The banned journalists included included three Moscow-based employees of the BBC that were later removed from the list.

But the government kept the names of a Spanish correspondent and a writer whom Germany’s Die Zeit weekly later identified as a freelance contributor to one of its supplements.

“We are appalled by this ban, which represents an absurd, counter-productive breach of freedom of information,” the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. The New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists said it also “deplores” Ukraine’s pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko’s decision and questioned his commitment to media rights. The group said it had initially counted 41 reporters and bloggers on Poroshenko’s list.

“While the government may not like or agree with the coverage, labelling journalists a potential threat to national security is not an appropriate response,” said the media protection lobby.

Poroshenko signed a decree late Wednesday enacting targeted measures against some 400 officials and 90 companies held responsible for Ukraine’s bloody pro-Russian uprising and Moscow’s annexation of Crimea last year. It affected several major state-owned Russian media companies as well as such financial giants as the national flag carrier Aeroflot and Gazprom Bank.

Russia portrays the Ukrainian conflict as a “civil war” in which it has played no part.

“The fact that many media representatives are on these lists is, certainly, absolutely unacceptable. It absolutely does not comply with any principles of the freedom of speech,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. The Kremlin’s anger was echoed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) — a Cold-War era body that has spearheaded attempts to negotiate an end to the continent’s bloodiest crisis since the 1990s Balkans wars.