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Paris offers no comment on Kharkov mercenary deaths

Earlier, French Ambassador to Russia Pierre Levy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry over the presence of French mercenaries in Ukraine

PARIS, January 19. /TASS/. The French Foreign Ministry offered no comment on the death of French nationals in Kharkov after the country’s ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"Please consult our statement from yesterday," a ministry spokesman said in reply to a TASS question during an online press briefing.

Earlier on Friday, French Ambassador to Russia Pierre Levy was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry over the presence of French mercenaries in Ukraine. He was told that the responsibility for the death of French nationals in Ukraine rested entirely with Paris, "which is encouraging recruiting mechanisms in the country to hire mercenaries to take part in the hostilities on the part of the Kiev regime." "The waging of the 'proxy war' by the West, including France, and the steady increase in weapons supplies to the Kiev regime provoke an escalation of hostilities, lead to numerous civilian casualties and turn it (France - TASS) into an accomplice to the Kiev regime's war crimes," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.

On Thursday, Reuters and AFP released a French Foreign Ministry statement saying that France has no mercenaries either in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world. The ministry denied Russia’s reports that numerous French mercenaries had been killed in a Russian strike on Kharkov as a "flagrant Russian manipulation" and called for disregarding them.

The Russian Defense Ministry said earlier that Russian forces had dealt a pinpoint strike on a temporary deployment center for foreign militants in Kharkov. According to the ministry, most of the foreign mercenaries were French nationals. As a result of the strike, 60 militants were killed and more than 20 were wounded.

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