Embassy Press Officer’s reply to a media question concerning accusations against Russia of poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal
Q.: Has the Embassy received any materials from the UK supporting yesterday’s accusations against Russia related to the Skripal case?
A.: No, we have not received any additional documents, clarifications or requests. The British authorities continue to expect “answers” from Russia, but they forget to ask questions. As we have pointed out earlier, London’s accusations are coupled with a blunt refusal to cooperate. Instead, we are spoken to in the language of ultimatums. The latest example was yesterday’s meeting at the Foreign Office where Ivan Volodin, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., was denied an opportunity to reply to the British démarche, raise additional questions or explain Russia’s position.
The British side claims that it is interested in maintaining a dialogue, but in reality we are witnessing a never-ending monologue, descending to direct insults. This morning, new red lines were crossed by the Minister of State for Security at the Home Office, Ben Wallace. By the way, it was he who was “waiting for a phone call from the Russian state” in July, but ignored the Embassy’s subsequent offer of a meeting.
Russia has been open to working with the British side on the Salisbury incident from the very beginning. We continue to adhere to this position. We are prepared to cooperate as soon as we receive a proper request.
On 20 February, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab made an official statement, according to which “with the highest level of probability, the GRU carried out large-scale, disruptive cyber-attacks against a range of Georgian web hosting providers and resulted in websites being defaced, including sites belonging to the Georgian Government, courts, NGOs, media and businesses, and also interrupted the service of several national broadcasters”. It is emphasized that “the UK, Georgia and the international partners have exposed” this fact.
On 15 February 2020 the Embassy hosted a conference on the situation with the Russian language in UK that brought together heads of Russian studies at British schools in London, Hampton, Oxford and Ware. The event was co-organised together with the Russian language teachers’ society UK.
Question: How would you comment on the statement mentioning Russia’s “violations” made by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the FCO H.Wheeler on February 6 at the debate in the House of Commons on persecution of Christians? Answer: This statement is ill-advised and could not be further from the truth. Christians make up the majority of Russian believers. Hundreds of new churches are being built. The Russian Orthodox Church is actively engaging in public discussions on socially significant issues. Most favourable conditions have been created for exercising the freedom of belief for other Christian denominations as well as non-Christians.
Ladies and gentlemen, The visit of the Russian Foreign Minister and his delegation to Mexico is coming to an end. I believe the visit was very fruitful. We held highly constructive and useful talks with my Mexican counterpart, Mr Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubón. As you may know, the ties between our two nations have a long history. They were officially established 130 years ago: next December will see their anniversary and we have arranged with our Mexican colleagues today to celebrate this memorial date fittingly.
Ladies and gentlemen, Today, in addition to the launch ceremony for the TurkStream gas pipeline that you witnessed, President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan held intensive bilateral talks. They adopted a joint statement following the talks. I would like to highlight several points of this document.
On January 4, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a telephone conversation with Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the latter’s initiative.
We were concerned to learn of the death of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Major General Qasem Soleimani in a US military strike on Baghdad airport.
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