“It is clear that the US law enforcement and secret services will only expand the hunt for Russian citizens,” Zakharova said
Russia will not leave unretaliated the US law enforcers and secret services’ hunt for Russian citizens, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in connection with the detentions of a number of Russian citizens at the request of the US authorities.
Zakharova stressed that Russia considered the detention of Russian citizens in Italy and Germany at the request of the US Department of Justice for their subsequent extradition to the United States as “a continuation of Washington’s large-scale campaign to capture ‘undesirable’ Russians with the aim of their subsequent guaranteed conviction and sentencing to long prison terms by the US punitive justice system.”
“It is clear that the US law enforcement and secret services will only expand the hunt for Russian citizens. Such hostile actions, of course, will not remain without retaliation,” Zakharova said.
“What makes this situation particularly cynical is this is tantamount to taking hostages for their further use for political purposes,” Zakharova continued. “The charges are once again put forward extraterritorially in connection with alleged violations of the US sanction legislation. In the light of Washington’s actual involvement in Ukraine as a party to the conflict this is clearly another attempt to stage a show trial in order to intimidate business circles in Russia and abroad.”
Zakharova called upon “everyone who has even the slightest reason to suspect certain ‘interest’ on the part of the United States” to refrain from foreign trips to any countries unfriendly to Russia, as well as the states with which Washington has bilateral agreements on extradition.
On Wednesday, US authorities charged five Russian citizens and two Venezuelan oil traders with sanctions evasion and money laundering. The Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alleges they “participated in a scheme to illegally obtain U.S. military technology and sanctioned Venezuelan oil.”
Among the accused are Yury Orekhov and Artyom Uss, son of the Krasnoyarsk Region’s Governor Alexander Uss. The US Department of Justice said that Orekhov and Uss were detained on October 17 in Germany and Italy respectively. If found guilty, they may face up to 30 years in prison.
