MOSCOW, October 7. /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Tuesday that over 20 Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian citizens who were in custody in Libya from 2011 have returned home.
“The main thing that we can say today is that all Russians have returned home. All of them are in good health. This equally concerns the citizens of Belarus and Ukraine, for whom we have been fighting as persistently as for our own nationals,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
The situation over the detained citizens in Libya has been among the priorities for the Russian Foreign Ministry from the first days, and all the necessary measures through various channels have been taken to release them, Lukashevich said.
The intensive effort had not been made public due to the delicacy of steps, as well as the difficult and dangerous situation in Libya, which plunged into one of its worst political crises since the ouster of the country’s long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
“For us, it is always important to have the final result of the efforts, including the methods of the “silent diplomacy,” and not the possibility of gaining political goals ‘in public,’” Lukashevich said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in August that political process of building a modern democratic state in Libya on the ruins of the Gaddafi regime has come to a dead end.
The ministry said the current political chaos in Libya has been directly triggered by the meddling of the United States and its NATO allies in the domestic conflict to "forcefully democratize the country."