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Russian diplomat: NATO ready to breach morality, ethics to fuel anti-Russian propaganda

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was commenting on a meeting NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow held last week with a top Ukrainian clergyman

Ukraine's Patriarch Filaret in Washington in February, 2015 EPA/TASS/JIM LO SCALZO

Ukraine's Patriarch Filaret in Washington in February, 2015

© EPA/TASS/JIM LO SCALZO

MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday NATO seemed ready to exceed elementary norms of ethics and morality to widen its anti-Russian propaganda in relation to the crisis in Ukraine, stalling chances for peace.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was commenting on a meeting NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow held last week with a top Ukrainian clergyman.

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"It seems that the alliance, understanding the futility of ‘traditional’ steps to widen the block’s massive anti-Russian propaganda, is ready to step over any moral and ethical norms, intruding into the ecclesiastical sphere and shamelessly speculating on religious sensitivities," Lukashevich said.

"The mere fact of such a meeting, apart from its ‘military’ content, not only hurts the chances of smoothing over differences and searching for common ground within Ukraine's split society. It may also become a kind of ‘a delayed-action mine’ threatening the peace process in Ukraine on the basis of nationwide dialogue and reconciliation," he said.

NATO’s Vershbow on April 22 met Patriarch Filaret, who heads the Kiev Patriarchate, a branch of the Orthodox Church that broke away from Moscow in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the declaration of an independent Ukraine. The two men discussed possible assistance to Ukraine in modernising and reforming its military to strengthen the country's armed capabilities.

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