MOSCOW, August 23. /TASS/. The State Duma (the lower house of parliament) Commission on Foreign Interference plans to invite German media outlet Deutsche Welle’s reporters to one of its meetings, State Duma Security and Anti-Corruption Committee Chairman Vasily Piskarev said on Friday.
"We have questions for Deutsche Welle that we would like to have answered, so we will invite them. We want to find out the truth and direct communication is the only way to do it," Piskarev told reporters.
He added that the meeting’s date would be announced later as lawmakers were currently meeting with people in their electoral constituencies. "We need to know what our voters think about it," Piskarev said.
On August 19, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said that information on interference in Russia’s internal affairs on the part of foreign governments and media outlets kept coming in. In this regard, he mentioned the United States and Deutsche Welle.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry earlier summoned Beate Grzeski, the charge d’affaires at the German Embassy in Moscow, to emphasize that Deutsche Welle’s calls on Moscow residents to take to the streets in unauthorized rallies were unacceptable. The ministry also reprimanded a US diplomat for publishing information about the August 3 unauthorized rally on the embassy’s website.