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Security services planned to look for explosives at Russian diplomatic missions — diplomat

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, the US security services obviously hoped Russian diplomats would lose their nerves and here there will be "an image of an aggressive Russian"

The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS

The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

© Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS

VLADIVOSTOK, September 3. /TASS/. The US intelligence agencies were going to look for explosives at Russian diplomatic representations in the US, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the Rossiya 1 television channel on Sunday.

"By the way, do you know, what they were looking for - as we were told before the searches? You would not believe it - they were looking for explosives," she said, adding ironically that it can be easily imagined how Russian diplomats are carrying explosive substances in their elegant cases.

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According to Zakharova, the US security services obviously hoped Russian diplomats would lose their nerves and here there will be "an image of an aggressive Russian." "Just try to imagine that you are being brainwashed for a year that an enemy is living overseas and this enemy is impacting your life and everything bad that might happen - the election of a president you don’t like - has been done by the Russians," she said.

"On September 2, black cars with FBI and State Department officers rolled up to our consulate general in San Francisco and they came into the building," she said. "A day before, the directorate chief said that if the doors of our diplomatic compound, which is our property, were closed they would be broken. More to it, a car of a private company specializing in forcing open doors, locks and safes drove to our trade mission in Washington. We have posted this video in the internet."

"I don’t know how our diplomats could find nerve enough to open the doors and be polite," she added.

Earlier, the Russian foreign ministry said in statement that on September 2 the United States authorities had seized the buildings of Russia’s consulate general in San Francisco and trade mission in Washington, which are Russia’s property and enjoy diplomatic immunity. Apart from that, Russian personnel was denied access to the premises the Russian trade mission rents in New York. Moscow described the seizure of Russian diplomatic property in the United States as an openly hostile step and called on the US authorities to return the diplomatic facilities immediately.

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Foreign policy United States Maria Zakharova

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