Russian Foreign Ministry Says Navalny's Allies Receive Instructions from NATO
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, expressed said on Tuesday that Alexey Navalny's allies should not be called "opposition," as they are in fact influence agents who receive instructions from NATO on the format of rallies.
"In fact we should stop calling them opposition, opposition is another thing. These are influence agents, and I can prove it ... On February 4, Volkov (Leonid Volkov, the chief coordinator of Navalny's regional teams) said they would no longer hold rallies in winter and would continue in spring and summer.
But today ... they announced quite the opposite thing, they said rallies would continue in February. So, what happened between February 4 and February 9? ... Yesterday, Volkov and Ashurkov (Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is labeled as a foreign agent by the Russian Ministry of Justice) held an online meeting with EU member states, the US and the UK, in Brussels, in the Polish mission at the EU," Zakharova said, as aired by Russia's Channel One.
"This format, EU countries plus the US plus the UK, is somewhat broader that the EU, this is NATO. So, they held a meeting with the NATO yesterday and received instructions. I think they were just told that there is no need to wait for spring and summer, that they should continue destabilizing the situation," Zakharova continued, Sputnik reported.
She also said that the meeting could only be qualified as "talks with influence agents for destabilizing the situation in a sovereign state."
