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Lavrov: Unprecedented global information campaign can be witnessed against Russia

According to Lavrov, Russia will seek elimination of attempts to discriminate against Fund for legal support of Russian compatriots leaving abroad in Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine

MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. An unpreceded global information campaign can be witnessed against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday.

"We have been lately working in a complicated situation, including an unprecedented information campaign directed against our citizens and restrictions," Lavrov told a session of board of trustees of the Fund for legal support of Russian compatriots leaving abroad. "Another problem is migration crisis that engulfed Europe and starts to affect interests of Russian-speaking communities that leave in European Union member countries," he added.

"In his speech at the fifth World Congress of Compatriots in September last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that ensuring legal rights and freedoms of our compatriots, protecting them from any forms of discrimination remain among our absolute priorities," the foreign minister reminded. "And the Fund for legal support of Russian compatriots leaving abroad plays an important role in this, just like the president noted," Lavrov said.

He added that "the Fund confidently steps up efforts in resolving its tasks on providing expert legal aid to compatriots, thus proving in practice the relevance and effectiveness of this structure."

According to Lavrov,  Russia will seek elimination of attempts to discriminate against Fund for legal support of Russian compatriots leaving abroad in Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine.

"Not everyone likes the Fund’s activities. We are seriously concerned that the authorities of Latvia, Estonia make steps to ban entrance to the territory of their countries to several employees of the Fund. They freeze its financial resources in Ukraine as well," Lavrov said at the session of the Fund’s board of trustees.

"We will seek elimination of these or any other manifestations of discrimination," he noted.

The minister stressed the The Fund to Support and Protect the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad should use the potential of Russian-language media to the full.

"In this difficult international environment the fund needs to continue to improve its methods of work, expand its presence abroad and enhance cooperation with the countries’ coordination councils, our compatriots’ organizations and, of course, make maximum use of the potential of various Russian-language media," the minister said. "The tasks to implement the results of the World Congress of Compatriots remain an important benchmark in this work.".