MOSCOW, April 23. /TASS/. The European Union’s massive and indiscriminate support for the authorities in Kiev makes Brussels responsible for the persecution of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the ministry’s website on Friday.
"Possibly, the chiefs of European diplomacy should give up indiscriminate and wholesale support for Kiev and urge it to abandon aggressive, militarist rhetoric and to diligently comply with the obligations to settling the conflict in accordance with the Minsk package of measures and agreements, achieved at the Normandy Quartet’s summits," Zakharova said. "Otherwise, no doubts will be left the European Union, whose position is in fact cannot be distinguished from the Ukrainian one, has taken a certain side in the conflict and actively connives with the Kiev authorities’ nationalist policies. Consequently, it is responsible for the effects of this policy, including Ukraine’s continued large-scale and aggressive infringement of the rights and freedoms of the Russian-speaking population, as well as the re-emergence of the savage ideology of neo-Nazism and right-wing extremism."
Commenting on a tweet by the chief of European diplomacy Josep Borrell regarding alleged Russian aggression against Ukraine Zakharova said that Borrell was biased, which merely demonstrated the European Union’s inability to objectively evaluate the current events and "realize their causes and tragic consequences."
"The chief European diplomat’s biased stance is very disappointing. Falsehoods about a ‘Russian aggression’ continue to be repeated again and again like mantras. What kind of "reserved response" or, let alone, "steps towards a settlement" by the Kiev authorities can one talk about at a time when Ukrainian weapons and military vehicles are being moved towards the engagement line, and the suburbs of Donetsk are daily attacked with Ukrainian shells and mines, which kill civilians, including children?" Zakharova said.
She expressed the hope that Brussels would stop spreading "crude anti-Russian disinformation and, guided by the long-term interests of European peoples, will display initiative in exploring roads towards the normalization of Russian-EU cooperation."
"This would benefit the European Union’s professed intention to achieve ‘strategic autonomy’ from its overseas partners in a new multipolar world order," Zakharova concluded.