President Petro Poroshenko has banned two BBC correspondents from Ukraine along with many Russian journalists and public figures.

The long-serving BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells have been barred from entering the country, according to a list published on the presidential website on Wednesday. The decree says those listed were banned for one year for being a “threat to national interests” or promoting “terrorist activities”.

BBC cameraman Anton Chicherov was also banned, along with Spanish journalists Antonio Pampliega and Ángel Sastre, who went missing, presumed kidnapped, in Syria in July.

The list targeted people involved in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the aggression in eastern Ukraine, Poroshenko said, referring to the conflict with Russia-backed rebels that has continued in certain hotspots this year despite a February ceasefire.

Andrew Roy, the BBC’s foreign editor, said: “This is a shameful attack on media freedom. These sanctions are completely inappropriate and inexplicable measures to take against BBC journalists who are reporting the situation in Ukraine impartially and objectively and we call on the Ukrainian government to remove their names from this list immediately.’

The reason for the BBC correspondents’ ban was not clear, but media coverage of the conflict with the rebels – whom the authorities and local media often call “terrorists” – has been a sensitive subject.

Russian television has covered the Ukrainian crisis in a negative light, frequently referring to the new Kiev government as a “fascist junta”, while international media has focused on civilian casualties and the use of cluster munitions in populated areas by both sides.

According to the United Nations, more than 6,500 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict, but the real figure is likely to be higher. The new list expands sanctions adopted earlier this month and includes more than 400 people and 90 organisations.

Poroshenko announced the new round of sanctions in response to the rebels’ plan to hold local elections in October and November in territory they control. “This adventurism and irresponsible decision requires our exact, coordinated reaction to the threat that has been created to the Minsk (peace) agreements,” he said at the time.

Among the Russians sanctioned were Dmitry Kiselyov, a television host known for his anti-western statements, who is also barred from entering the European Union. The major Russian state news channels Rossiya-24, Channel One and NTV have all been banned.

Defence minister Sergei Shoigu, parliamentary speaker Sergei Naryshkin and foreign affairs committee head Alexei Pushkov were among the Russian officials who were banned, as well as Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechnya republic.

Others include Activist Alexander Brod, a member of the presidential human rights council and director of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, and journalists and businesspeople from Israel, the United States and several other countries.

French actor Gerard Depardieu was banned from Ukraine for his statements in support of Russian president Vladimir Putin and singer Iosif Kobzon, who is banned from the EU, has also been included in the new ban.

Poroshenko said the new sanctions would “strengthen the defences not only of Ukraine but of Europe as a whole, because a war is going on here”.