Russian diplomats are not interested in American special services attempts to lure Russian diplomats, according to Kremlin.
Moscow has reacted badly to attempts by US intelligence agencies to recruit Russian citizens, including diplomatic staff, because they said it was unacceptable and shameless behavior.
Speaking during a conference call on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Moscow is aware of the reports of such actions and shares the concerns of Russia's ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov, who reported these attempts in the first place.
There is such information in the Kremlin. We are concerned with the head of the US diplomatic mission. We consider the very impudent behavior of representatives of the American intelligence services in relation to our citizens and employees of our foreign agencies unacceptable, said Peskov.
On Sunday, Antonov stated that employees of Russia's diplomatic mission in the US were constantly threatened with physical violence and compared the Russian embassy in the US to a besieged castle.
Our diplomatic mission is faced with anti-Russian protests every day, and there are occasional hooligan attacks and acts of vandalism. Antonov said that embassy staff are receiving threats, including physical violence, during a Russian talk show appearance.
He claimed that American intelligence agencies were trying to encourage Russian diplomats to commit treason, saying that representatives of these agencies were flaunting around the Russian embassy and handing out the phone numbers of the FBI and the CIA, where the diplomats are asked to call to establish cooperation. Antonov said embassy workers were receiving targeted text messages on their mobile phones with agencies contact information and invitations to respond to these appeals. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Western countries were unable to find traitors among Russia's diplomats despite attempts to find them inside Russia and abroad, despite the total hybrid war that the collective West has launched against Russia.
Lavrov noted that Russian diplomats despite the difficult foreign political situation in the world, which he claimed was worse than during the Cold War.
The foreign minister said that such actions are completely destroying the general atmosphere of Russia's relations with the West because they often have to work in extreme conditions, sometimes at risk to health and life, but even in the darkest years of the Cold War.
Moscow has been hit by several waves of Western sanctions since the conflict with Ukraine broke out in late February. Russia attacked its neighboring state after Ukraine s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk Agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied that it plans to retake the two republics by force.