MOSCOW, February 4./TASS/. The West’s inadmissible rhetoric regarding the situation in Russia will top the agenda at the upcoming negotiations on February 5, between European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday.
"This entire set of issues - inappropriate remarks, pseudo evaluations and the distortion of facts - will be raised tomorrow at Sergey Lavrov’s talks with European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, who will be arriving in our country for a visit. Let me reiterate that the visit is a scheduled one," Zakharova said.
According to her, the West is carrying out "a coordinated information campaign" against Russia, a global attempt to restrain the country, aimed at meddling in domestic affairs. "By the way, we are far from being the only ones that our Western partners are targeting. They are concerned about everyone who could potentially be their competitor in one way or another, or is already a competitor or is ahead in some issues," " the diplomat explained.
Over the recent days, Western countries have been engaged in distorting the developments underway in Russia in connection with the situation around blogger Alexey Navalny, as well as in repeating "a set of baseless accusations" against Moscow. The US "is conducting this chorus," she stressed. "This will be our separate topic with it," the diplomat added, pointing also to the role of the UK, Germany and France in the anti-Russian activity.
"It seems that the Western official circles simply refuse to see what is going on in their countries, what is happening in the European Union right now, and what has been happening in the United States of America over the past few months," she added. "They are deliberately diverting attention of the global community from the situation in their own countries, focusing on their vision of the situation in Russia," Zakharova said.
She added that invectives against Russia wouldn’t help Western states in sorting out their domestic problems. ‘I can give advice. All that vigor that is channeled into criticizing our country must be used for peaceful purposes, namely to settle the issues that are on the agenda in your countries - the European Union and NATO," the diplomat summed up.
On Tuesday, Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny had his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher fraud case converted into real prison time. He will serve his time behind bars in a medium security prison and will remain in a detention center until the verdict enters into force. It was earlier reported that diplomats from around 20 countries drove to the Moscow City Court where the Navalny case was heard.
Zakharova then slammed the presence of foreign diplomats at the hearing as a "political rally," vowing that Moscow would react to every case of interference in domestic affairs by foreign diplomats.