MOSCOW, February 2. /TASS/. The presence of foreign diplomats at blogger Alexey Navaly’s trial is basically the West laying bare its efforts at containing Russia and exerting pressure on the judge, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday.
She recalled that diplomats traditionally supported citizens of their countries in courts. "This [the appearance of diplomats at Navalny’s trial] is no longer just interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. This is self-exposure of the unsavory and illegal role of the collective West in attempts to contain Russia. Or is it an attempt to exert psychological pressure on the judge?" Zakharova pointed out.
"I do not rule out that they are to a large extent concerned about the fate of NATO’s - for example, British and American - millions that have been pumped into illegal activities on Russia’s soil. They will have to report to the capitals about where they [the millions] went," Zakharova added.
A TASS correspondent earlier reported that about 20 representatives of embassies of various countries, including the United States, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Austria and Switzerland, had arrived at the Moscow City Court where Moscow’s Simonovsky Court is considering a motion by the federal prison authority on replacing a suspended sentence for blogger Alexey Navalny with a real jail term as part of the Yves Rocher fraud case.