MOSCOW, April 7. /TASS/. Moscow has not influenced the process of holding the referendum in the Netherlands on the EU-Ukraine association deal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an exclusive interview with TASS First Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman.
"We do not interfere in this process [referendum]. We did not touch on this issue in any way because we were sure that one should not meddle in democratic processes," Lavrov said.
Lavrov said there were attempts to accuse Russia that "we talk someone into voting against, in fact there was a massive campaign there of the official Kiev authorities and of many sponsors of the Kiev authorities who ‘worked on’ the population considerably."
Russia’s top diplomat said he knows nothing about the EU's further steps. "We have what we have. I don’t know how the EU will act further - this is not our matter," he explained stressing that this is the domestic affair of the Netherlands.
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"Referendum is a mechanism of democracy and in line with its own laws the Netherlands organized it when it received a certain amount of signatures of citizens who proposed to hold such a referendum," Lavrov said. "The results of the referendum are the results for the Dutch government," he added.
More than 60% of the Dutch citizens voted against the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement at the referendum on Wednesday. The turnout was 32.2%, which is sufficient to ensure that the vote was declared valid (30%). The official results of the referendum will be announced by the Electoral Council of the Netherlands on April 12.