WASHINGTON, July 7. /TASS/. The United States should stop using the freedom of religion as an instrument for exerting pressure to affect domestic and foreign policy of other states, the Russian Embassy in Washington said in a statement on Friday.

Commenting on new anti-Russian reports of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the embassy underscored the blasphemous nature of accusations against Russia.

"In addition to listing threadbare assertions, Americans have taken Russophobic slogans to the extreme. They pointed out that Russia had launched a special military operation in Ukraine under the slogan of combating Satanism," reads a statement, posted on the embassy’s Telegram channel.

"The United States has repeatedly been spotted provoking tension on the ground of religion in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa, and the former Yugoslavia. We urge Washington to take a look in the mirror and stop using the issue of religious freedom as a lever to influence the domestic and foreign policies of other states," the embassy said.

Russian diplomats added that the US authorities "stubbornly ignore the infringement of the rights of believers by the Kiev regime and the persecution of novices of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra" and "prefer not to notice the repressions of the Zelensky government against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church."

The situation around the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery, one of Russia's first monasteries and the oldest monastery in modern-day Ukraine, has been heating up since March 30. UOC monks refused to leave the cloister as demanded by the directorate of the Ukrainian Culture Ministry’s Kiev-Pechersk Lavra Historical and Cultural Preserve, which had unilaterally terminated the UOC’s open-ended lease to the Lavra.