MOSCOW, July 17. /TASS/. The New York Times article focusing on Russia’s denial to issue visas for teachers of the Anglo-American School of Moscow has been published at the US’ behest, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Wednesday.
"The publication of the article in The New York Times was not a coincidence. I have irrefutable evidence that the leaks were sanctioned by Washington and the article was published at its bidding," she underlined.
"We believe that the US state institutions are deliberately creating a deadlock situation to either contrive another scandal or stage a new provocation point, blatantly sacrificing the interests of citizens at the same time," Zakharova added.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry slammed that reports suggesting that American teachers were refused Russian visas as an outright lie, because they were traveling to Russia with diplomatic passports, while the school "operates as a commercial enterprise". The diplomatic agency underlined that Moscow had repeatedly been asking the US side for many years to sit down at the negotiating table, bring the school’s status into compliance and resolve all the issues that had emerged on the basis of reciprocity.
Visa situation
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the Russian authorities had denied entry visas for 30 teachers of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, where particularly children of foreign diplomats and businessmen are studying. The school serves around 1,200 children of different ages, including the ones whose parents are American, British, Canadian, German and South Korean diplomats. Russian kids are also among the students. The newspaper suggests that some of the students would probably have to be asked to leave due to teacher shortages. It also believes that it will not affect the kids of US, British and Canadian diplomats because they are enjoying admission priorities.