The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed its position regarding the announcement by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow supporting protests in Russia.
In a statement posted on its Facebook page on Saturday, the ministry noted that the American mission did not write a single line commenting on the protests of January 6 in Washington and the storming of the Capitol, highlighting that it did not condemn the deaths of five people and the arrest of more than 100 others. It also pointed out that just two days later, U.S. Ambassador John Sullivan described the events as "violent and criminal attacks." The ministry's statement continued: "The whole world saw how your government turned a peaceful protest into a non-peaceful one when the American police started shooting at the demonstrators," questioning when the embassy would be held accountable for the repeated police attacks on Russian journalists covering the protests in the U.S. during 2020. It noted how the U.S. government labeled the actions of peaceful American protesters as an attack on democracy.
The ministry concluded its statement by describing hypocrisy as a tool of American diplomacy, indicating that it has become more dangerous in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, saying, "Mind your own business and stop interfering in the affairs of other countries."
For her part, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova affirmed her ministry's intention to hold American diplomats accountable for the U.S. Embassy’s actions in Moscow on Friday, which involved publishing "protest routes" in several Russian cities and mixing information about a "march to the Kremlin."
Zakharova questioned the Russian news agency TASS: "Was this a general directive or specific instructions?" confirming that the plans were unknown even to the organizers themselves, referring to the protests (supporters of activist Alexei Navalny) that took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other Russian cities on Saturday.
She further questioned how the response would be if the Russian embassy in Washington published a map of protest routes with the Capitol building as the final destination, stating that mapping of this kind would result in a huge hysteria among American politicians, accompanied by anti-Russian slogans and threats of sanctions and the expulsion of Russian diplomats.
Zakharova emphasized that Americans would have to provide clarifications on this matter to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
