EMBASSY INFORMS
Ladies and gentlemen,
We had substantive and meaningful talks. We discussed the further development of the friendly and trustworthy relations between our countries in accordance with the agreements reached during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Riyadh in the autumn of 2019, and subsequent telephone conversations at top level. Citizens of Russia, friends, The year 2020 will be over in just a few minutes. As we were welcoming it a year ago today, just like people around the world, we thought and dreamed of changes for the better. No one could have imagined back then what kind of trials would come our way. Now, it appears that the outgoing year has taken in the burden of many years. It was a difficult year for all of us, with worries and serious financial difficulties, bitter experiences and, for some, loss of the loved ones. In 2020, Russia’s foreign policy focused on making better use of the potential for international cooperation in the interests of protecting national security, promoting the country’s socioeconomic development and encouraging approaches to current global and regional problems that meet the interests of Russia. The government of the Russian Federation has taken the decision to extend
the suspension of flights from the UK until 12 January 2021. In view of the New Year and Christmas holidays the Consular Section will be closed from 31 December 2020 till 10 January 2021. We hope you enjoy our festive concert of classical music with performances by Nadey Hakim (clarinet), Aleem Kandur (violin), Victor Maslov (piano) and Nina Mishchenko (harp).
Your hosts for the evening will be Anastasia and Ilya Erofeev. We consider the adoption by the European Union at the behest of its leading Member States of illegitimate restrictive measures against some of our fellow citizens under the pretext of their alleged involvement in the incident with Russian citizen Alexei Navalny to be absolutely unacceptable. On October 1, we sent a request to Fernando Arias, Director-General of the OPCW and head of its Technical Secretariat, for technical assistance under Clause 38 (е) of Article VIII of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Two and a half months later, we are still waiting for a meaningful response. Their explanation is the absence of the German authorities’ permission for full-scale cooperation between the agency’s experts and competent Russian organisations to clarify the circumstances of what Berlin describes as the poisoning of the blogger. Russia’s suggestions regarding the main modalities of a planned visit of OPCW Technical Secretariat’s representatives to Russia have been rejected as well. Moscow has taken note of a statement made by US Secretary of State’s Special Envoy for Syria Joel Rayburn to the effect that Russia and the Assad regime are aggravating the problem of terrorism in Syria. He has accused Moscow and Damascus, without any substantiation, of involvement in the bombing and artillery raids on Idlib, which allegedly do not target terrorists but innocent civilians, infrastructure and armed opposition groups. He has also said that he believes that Russia and the Damascus regime are not doing enough to combat terrorism. Steve Rosenberg, BBC News: Mr President, ‘a new Cold War’ is an expression that one can hear more and more often when it comes to Russia-West relations. And we hear Russia regularly blame external forces for these tensions. It may be America, or Britain, or Nato. But after having been at the helm of power for 20 years, don’t you believe that you are at least partly responsible for the deplorable state of those relations, especially if one recalls Russia’s actions over the recent years, from annexing Crimea to using a chemical weapon on British soil, in Salisbury? Or are you not? Are Russian authorities ‘white and fluffy’? And when it comes to chemical weapons – have you read the Bellingcat report that sets out in detail that the attack on Alexey Navalny was orchestrated by the Russian State? Thank you.
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