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Russian Foreign Ministry envoy slams US State Department report on religious freedom

"The assessment of the situation in Russia, in particular in Crimea, is politicized, biased and far-fetched in accordance with the sad tradition," a diplomat wrote

Prayers at the Bakhchisaray Grand Khan mosque in Crimea ITAR-TASS/Stanislav Krasilnikov

Prayers at the Bakhchisaray Grand Khan mosque in Crimea

© ITAR-TASS/Stanislav Krasilnikov

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MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. The report of the US Department of State on religious freedom "abounds with flaws," the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Human Rights Commissioner Konstantin Dolgov said on Friday.

"The assessment of the situation in Russia, in particular in Crimea, is politicized, biased and far-fetched in accordance with the sad tradition," the diplomat wrote in his Twitter microblog.

According to Dolgov, "the situation in Ukraine is presented with distortions and blatant gaps." "Many cases of attacks by ultra-radicals, often with police complicity, on cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, desecration of synagogues, bandit attacks on Jews and anti-Semitic rhetoric have been ignored," Dolgov noted.

The "Syrian" section lacks the analysis of the root causes of rampant terrorism and systematic bloody attacks on entire religious groups, particularly Christians," he wrote. "Instead, it contains stereotyped assaults on the legitimate government of Syria.".

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