Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the country will shut down the German cultural centres amid brewing tensions. <\/p>\n
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the country will shut down the German cultural centres amid brewing tensions. The proclamation came right after Berlin blamed Moscow for an attempted attack at Leipzig\/Halle Airport and announced the closure of both the Russian Consulate in Bonn and the Russian House cultural centre in the German capital.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Lavrov said that cultural centres belonging to Germany\u2019s Goethe-Institut would be closed in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, adding that any other response would show a lack of \u201cself-respect\u201d on Russia\u2019s part. The remarks from the Russian diplomat came while he was speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.<\/p>\n
Lavrov emphasised that Germany \u201ccould not have failed to understand\u201d that the closure of the Russian House would \u201csignify the end of their cultural presence in Russia.\u201d The row between the two nations started after a drone laden with explosives was found near a Ukrainian plane at Leipzig\/Halle Airport on August 4 and later defused.<\/p>\n
It is pertinent to note that over the years, Russia has been widely accused by Western officials of running a campaign of sabotage and disruption to undermine support for Ukraine and destabilise European nations.<\/p>\n
Putin rejects allegations<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed all the allegations, saying that they want to distract from its own failings and dissatisfaction among voters. Any proof being offered \u201chas been planted,\u201d Putin said.<\/p>\n
Amidst the tussle, the European ministers on Wednesday weighed how best to respond to the attempted drone attack but struggled to find new ways to meet the challenge without resorting to military means.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is clear that it has all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism. The question is: what do we do about this?\u201d EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters before chairing a meeting of the bloc\u2019s foreign ministers in Ireland. The European diplomats discussed sanctions, visa restrictions and shutting Russian consulates, among other measures to hit back at Moscow.<\/p>\n
Not only that, the EU has slapped two dozen packages of sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, hitting more than 3,000 officials, oligarchs and entities including banks, energy companies and drone makers. The EU was already preparing to impose more travel bans and asset freezes on another 1,600 people, Kallas said.<\/p>\n
It is important to point out that Germany has insisted that it was \u201cnot at war\u201d but had become a \u201cdaily target\u201d of the Kremlin\u2019s hybrid campaign. Putin dismissed the allegations, saying Berlin wants to distract from its own failings and dissatisfaction among voters. Any proof being offered \u201chas been planted,\u201d Putin said.<\/p>\n
But German Foreign Minister Johan Wadephul said Berlin had carefully prepared its response \u201cand now Russia must live with these consequences.\u201d He called on Russia \u201cto show that it is also ready for reasonable talks and negotiations, particularly regarding the situation in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
With input from The Associated Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday that the country will shut down the German cultural centres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[18,1355,722,122,5,60242,1827,9427,5857,358,59983,60742,1801,46],"class_list":["post-83949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-eurocopa-2024","tag-european-union","tag-general-news","tag-germany","tag-johan-wadephul","tag-kaja-kallas","tag-leipzig","tag-moscow","tag-politics","tag-sanctions-and-embargoes","tag-sergey-lavrov","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}