MOSCOW, September 9. /TASS/. Moscow did not seek to accuse anyone when putting forward facts proving that Alexey Navalny’s projects had been funded through German and US embassy workers, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, commenting on remarks by Berlin and Washington, which claimed that those statements were groundless.
"Foreign embassies in Moscow hired Russian nationals and paid them money in the form of salaries and bonuses, and those people, in turn, transferred money to the relevant organizations. These are just facts and we have confirmed them," she pointed out. "When they accuse us, they don’t present any evidence, though they come up with a punishment right away and try to implement it, but when we point to facts without bringing forward any accusations, they end up in hysterics," Zakharova added.
According to her, Germany is not at all embarrassed to allege that Russian government agencies seek "to fabricate an accusation of funding the blogger." "We don’t fabricate anything, we simply point to established facts and we do it when responding to media questions," the Russian diplomat noted.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman earlier wrote on Telegram that reports about Navalny being sponsored by staff from foreign embassies had been confirmed. According to her, most funds were transferred through the US and German embassies.
Navalny, wanted for repeatedly violating his probation over his suspended sentence in the Yves Rocher case, was detained upon his return from Germany at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on January 17, 2021. On February 2, a Moscow court sentenced him to an actual prison term.