Moscow-Sana
Today, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the expansion of the list of German citizens prevented from entering the territory of Russia, in response to the sanctions taken by the European Union against Russian citizens.
In a statement carried by RIA Novosti, the ministry stressed that “according to the principle of diplomatic reciprocity, new German citizens have been added to the list of those banned from entering Russian territory, including officials in the German security and intelligence services that are part of the German Defense Ministry system.
The statement added that "Berlin has been promoting the story of allegations by" Russian hackers "of hacking into the Bundestag's computer networks in 2015 in the media for a long time in order to create a pretext for imposing new sanctions by the European Union against Russia.
The statement pointed out that “the Russian side has repeatedly appealed to the German parties to conduct bilateral consultations of experts to uncover the truth about the German allegations in the Russian hacker case and in order to identify the sources of cyber activity, but the German authorities ignored these proposals, indicating that Berlin was not interested in conducting a real investigation in this regard, and this is a provocation. Another against our country. In response to these measures by the European Union, Moscow has taken a decision to expand the list of German citizens banned from entering the territory of Russia.
The ministry emphasized that "if the German side continues the line of confrontation and hostility, we reserve the right to take further response measures."
On October 22, the European Union included Russian citizens and one organization in the sanctions list due to allegations of a cyber attack on the German Bundestag.
