Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that the case of journalist Julian Assange represents a stain on Western democracy. Lavrov explained to reporters following a meeting of the G20 ministerial council: "Regarding the case of Julian Assange, this is, of course, a disgrace for Western democracy." He stated, "U.S. officials have echoed in their press briefings that Assange is a criminal, not a journalist. This man revealed truths in front of the global public and uncovered actions carried out by U.S. intelligence and the U.S. military, which brazenly violate U.S. laws and the U.S. Constitution." He added: "If this is called criminal activity, it means that the criminals and psychopaths involved in these scandals wanted their crimes to remain concealed."
Lavrov emphasized that based on this, "the West has no right to interfere in Russia's internal affairs; there is the case of Julian Assange, and there is the case of American blogger Gonzalo Lira, who died under torture in a Ukrainian prison, and neither the Americans nor any other Western figure commented on that." The Australian journalist Assange gained fame in 2006 for his work on WikiLeaks, which was established to publish classified documents. In 2010, the site released secret footage of the U.S. military showing how U.S. forces killed at least 18 civilians in 2007. In the same year, the site published 250,000 U.S. diplomatic documents.
