MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. Baltic nations are determined to deal with "the Russian issue" by deporting a large number of Russian-speaking people, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing.
"The Baltic states are openly preparing mass deportations of Russian-speaking residents. Apparently, they anticipate that this will help finally resolve the 'Russian issue' and the problem, which is unprecedented for the 21st century, of mass non-citizenship in their territories," the diplomat said.
Plight of compatriots abroad
The spokeswoman referred to a report recently published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, on the situation with Russian citizens and compatriots in foreign countries.
"Regrettably, statistics confirm that the state of affairs in this area still shows no signs of improvement and continues to head in a negative direction due to the collective West’s efforts," she stated, "The violations of the rights of Russian citizens in Western countries are still numerous."
According to Zakharova, Russia’s special military operation, aimed at de-nazifying and demilitarizing Ukraine and protecting the civilian population in Donbass, is being used as a pretext to justify anti-Russian sentiment, even though many Western countries were furthering this agenda for decades even before February 2022.
"It is crystal clear that the Russophobic sentiment and the West’s encouragement of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev have given a powerful impetus to the endeavors of Poland, the Baltic countries, Ukraine and some other countries to step up - under the pretext, as they claim, of condemning Russia’s aggression - their attacks on the monuments and memorial sites to Red Army soldiers who died liberating Europe from the Nazis," the diplomat continued.
"In this regard, impetus has also been given to other areas of the so-called activities of these states that are mainly oriented at rewriting history and whitewashing collaborationism. The authorities of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and, of course, the Kiev regime have largely succeeded in Russophobia. They are making quite energetic efforts to squeeze the Russian language out of all schools, thus curtailing the right to receive education in their own language for a vast number of those people for whom Russian is a mother tongue."
Zakharova asserted that the Russian Foreign Ministry prioritizes the protection of Russian citizens’ rights abroad.
"Obviously, the collective West’s countries that proclaimed themselves the role models of democracy have been unable to get rid of discriminatory racist approaches, and in recent years have literally incorporated them into their official policy, and that may be collaborated by the plight of Russian citizens in those countries," she emphasized.
"We will keep monitoring the situation and documenting discriminatory manifestations in foreign countries so as to draw the attention of those countries’ leaderships, both in bilateral and multilateral forms, to such offenses and to demand that they comply with their international legal obligations regarding our compatriots," Zakharova concluded.