WASHINGTON, September 9. /TASS/. The issue of "exchange" of the sentenced citizens of Russia and the United States has not been touched upon in the contacts with US officials, Russia’s Ambassador in Washington Anatoly Antonov said in a statement on Wednesday, commenting on a recent publication in the New Yorker weekly.
"Along with this, we have never raised the issue of ‘an exchange’ of the Americans convicted in Russia for Russians in the US. The article contains a blatant lie," the diplomat stressed.
According to Antonov, in the New Yorker’s article Russia can trace "the continuation of the campaign to mobilize the public opinion," to try to whitewash US citizen Paul Whelan, who was earlier jailed in Russia for spying, as well as to "tarnish the Russians who have been unfairly sentenced in America."
"The intentional distortion of the Russian ambassador’s words and actions - with reference to US officials - is astonishing and resentful," says the commentary posted on the Facebook account of the diplomatic mission.
"We had not received any requests from the authors of this publication, nor had we received any requests to comment. They did not reflect our point of view. Non-compliance with elementary journalistic norms clearly indicates the article’s biased and propagandistic plot," Antonov said.
The ambassador says that "there is only one allegation in that article that is true."
"It says that we [Russian diplomats] constantly raise the issue of Konstantin Yaroshenko, Viktor Bout and other Russians jailed in the US in our conversations with US official figures," the ambassador explained.
Antonov says with confidence that "the protection of Russian citizens is an undoubted priority of the Russian embassy’s work in the United States."
"We have made multiple public statements demanding their release, and if there were health problems, we were issuing demarches insisting that they be provided with required medical services (the problem became especially acute amid the coronavirus pandemic, which affected the US penitentiary system as well)," the ambassador added.