THE HAGUE, October 5. /TASS/. Dutch lawmakers have postponed their trip to Russia amid the Netherlands’ claims that Russia is allegedly responsible for mounting cyber attacks on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Sven Koopmans from the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy said on Friday.
"The trip to Russia has been postponed, this is not the right time for it now," the legislator wrote in his Twitter page.
In Koopmans’ opinion, dialogue with Russia needs to be continued. However, the lawmaker went on to say that the visit "may be perceived as a pardon" for what he labels as "actions aimed against the rule of law."
A group of Dutch lawmakers was expected to kick off a five-day visit to Russia on October 22. In particular, the parliamentarians planned to meet with their Russian colleagues and discuss, among other things, the issues related to the Boeing-777 passenger plane crash over eastern Ukraine in July 2014. That being said, no new dates for the visit have been named.
Netherlands’ Defense Minister Ank Bijleveld claimed at a news conference on Thursday that Dutch military intelligence and security services had allegedly foiled an attack by Russian hackers against the global chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW. She claimed that four Russians - Alexey Morenets, Yevgeny Serebryakov, Oleg Sotnikov and Alexey Minin - were involved in the incident. Bijleveld claimed that all four worked for the Main Directorate (formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU) of Russia’s General Staff. According to her version of the events, the equipment confiscated from them was evidence they had tried to get access to information about the Malaysian MH17 flight disaster in Ukraine.
The Dutch Defense Ministry claims that the cyber attack was carried out on April 13. All four Russian suspects were expelled on the same day.