MOSCOW, October 31. /TASS/. The authorities in the EU tend to play the ‘blame Russia card’ as a response to all the woes the continent faces, including natural disasters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with the Association of European Businesses in Russia on Tuesday.
"Any adverse developments impacting the European Union, from various anti-government demonstrations to the bankruptcies of some companies to even as far as man-made disasters - all that can be heaped on Russia’s ‘malevolence’ and our ‘abuse’ of cyber space," he elaborated.
"Some even blurted out that we would not only meddle in all the elections by any means but also that we'd control the atmosphere," Russia’s top diplomat noted.
Commenting on accusations against Moscow from some European countries, including France, Germany, the UK and Sweden, concerning the alleged meddling in the elections, Lavrov stressed "no one has provided a single hard fact [to substantiate these statements].
"However, if we talk about Germany, the fact that Chancellor [Angela] Merkel’s private phone had been tapped [by US intelligence] has been registered by everyone," he noted.
"However, the BND [Germany’s foreign intelligence agency - TASS] keeps quiet about that. Everyone prefers to claim that ‘the Russians are doing something, but we cannot provide any evidence, because this is classified information."