Moscow-Sana
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that his country has included the Czech Republic and the United States on its list of non-friendly countries because of their hostile steps against Moscow.
Lavrov said during a press conference today, as reported by Russia Today, that the unfriendly moves of Prague and Washington were a reason for Moscow to take a decision to harmonize the conditions in which Russian diplomats in Prague and Washington work with the working conditions of Czech and American diplomats in the Russian capital, noting that the Czech authorities “are looking at shame.” About the ways out of the scandal of explosions in weapons depots in the eastern Czech town of Vrpetice, which took place seven years ago, and which Prague accused Russian military intelligence of being behind it and subsequently expelled 18 Russian diplomatic mission workers from the country.
Lavrov added that the Czech authorities should have shed light on this incident before they expelled the diplomats and accused them of being involved, while the investigation into it has not ended yet, expressing his suspicion that the investigation into the Verbetesi explosions will end to a "little result in view of the method they adopted in conducting it."
With regard to the United States, Lavrov said that its authorities had frozen several years ago the property of the Russian diplomatic mission and prevented its representatives from accessing these buildings belonging to the Russian state that were unlawfully looted, in addition to the American authorities expelling Russian diplomats on a regular basis, noting that his country had repeatedly warned Who will not tolerate these practices.
Last Friday, the Russian government approved the list of unfriendly foreign countries, which currently includes only the United States and the Czech Republic, and the measures imposed on these two countries under this step include a restriction on the number of people residing on Russian territory that their embassies in Moscow can employ.