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US sanctions coordinator invited to Crimea to verify peace on peninsula

Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov has responded to US State Department’s Special Coordinator for Sanctions Policy Daniel Fried

Daniel Fried AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool

Daniel Fried

© AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. A senior Russian parliamentarian, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, suggested that the US State Department’s Special Coordinator for Sanctions Policy Daniel Fried come to visit Crimea and see for himself that life on the peninsula is calm.

"Crimea is a zone of stability. Let Mr. Fried go to Crimea like the French parliamentarians (who visited Crimea in July) did, and see that people there live peacefully and calmly," Komoyedov’s press service quoted the chairman of the State Duma’s defense committee as saying.

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The admiral was responding to a statement by Fried, who was quoted by the media as saying that the US allegedly had an "elaborate plan" in case of Russia’s "full-scale invasion of Ukraine".

"It (life) would be even calmer without Ukrainian subversives penetrating into Russian territory," the admiral stressed.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on August 10 that it had detained a group of saboteurs in Crimea and prevented a number of terrorist attacks planned by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence department. The FSB said the saboteurs plotted attacks on the peninsula’s crucial infrastructure. Two Russian military servicemen were killed in the process of apprehending the terrorists.

President Putin slammed the Ukrainian secret services’ sabotage attempt in Crimea as "silly and criminal". The real aim, he said, was to divert attention from Ukraine’s domestic problems and the authorities, who were swindling their own people. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko dismissed Moscow’s charges, arguing that the detention of saboteurs was a provocation.

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