MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Moscow’s Ambassador to France Alexey Meshkov has warned Russian tourists planning to attend the Paris Olympics of the risks they may face.
"Our athletes and tourists who plan to visit Paris for the Olympic Games must understand one simple thing: they aren’t traveling to the flowery paradise that [top EU diplomat Josep] Borrell mentioned but to a dangerous Western jungle where they will have to fend for themselves because of what the French authorities are doing," the envoy told the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
"If any unexpected situations emerge, they will have to find a way out on their own because not only have the authorities fully barred our institutions, namely the embassy, from attending and participating in events related to the Olympic Games, but even despite numerous requests, they are unwilling to provide us with guarantees that we will get basic passes to move around downtown Paris, which will be locked down, while this is where all our offices are," the diplomat added.
According to Meshkov, the prosecutor’s office has told Russian diplomats to ask the French Interior Ministry to issue them passes. "The Interior Ministry has been ignoring all our requests. That said, it’s not just that they have banned our athletes from the Olympic Games but they have also kicked Russia in general out of all events related to the competition that will take place in France in the summer," he noted.
"It’s very strange to hear statements about talks of an Olympic ceasefire when we have no dialogue at all with France on the matter at the government level," the Russian ambassador concluded.