The Kremlin said on Friday that an investigation into the BBC's work in Russia was a response to Britain's treatment of Russia's RT TV channel and called some BBC reports tendentious and politically-motivated.
The Kremlin was commenting after Russia's media regulator said earlier on Friday it would carry out checks to determine if the BBC World News channel and BBC internet sites complied with Russian law.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said many questions had accumulated about the BBC's coverage of Russia and of Moscow's actions in Syria over a long period of time.
Earlier on Friday, the BBC said it worked in full compliance with Russia's laws and regulations to deliver independent news.
"As everywhere else in the world, the BBC works in Russia in full compliance with the country's laws and regulations to deliver independent news and information to its audiences," said a spokeswoman for the British publicly owned broadcaster.
Roskomnadzor, the Russian regulator, was responding to Britain's media regulator Ofcom which said on Thursday that Russian broadcaster RT had broken impartiality rules in news and current affairs programmes, including coverage of the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
