PARIS, February 20. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to Paris Alexey Meshkov, who has been summoned to the French Foreign Ministry in connection with blogger Alexey Navalny's death, pointed to the inadmissibility of interfering in Russia’s internal affairs, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in France told TASS on Tuesday.
"On February 19, Russian Ambassador to Paris Alexey Meshkov was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry, which read to him a circular in connection with the death of Alexey Navalny that was agreed upon at a Brussels meeting of EU foreign ministers," the spokesman said.
"In response, the French received a stern rebuke about the inadmissibility of this latest attempt by Western regimes to interfere in Russia's internal affairs," the spokesman added.
French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on Monday at a press conference in Buenos Aires that his country’s Foreign Ministry had summoned Russia’s Ambassador to France Meshkov to talk over the recent death of Navalny. The French top diplomat added that the decision was in line with what other European countries had already done.
The Federal Penitentiary Service’s Directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region said on February 16 that Navalny had died in a penal colony. According to the penitentiary authority, Navalny felt sick after a walk and fainted.
Medics arrived immediately but their more than 30-minute resuscitation efforts failed. Meanwhile, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the West’s statements concerning Navalny’s death as rabid and totally inadmissible, bearing in mind that there is no official information about the cause of his death.