Foreign Affairs closes the controversy arising from the words of the Russian Foreign Minister, Segéi Lavrov, who responded to the request for the release of the Russian opponent imprisoned by Putin Alekséi Navalny, with the argument that there are “political prisoners” in Spain, in reference to the Catalan independence leaders condemned by the Procès “.
The words of the Russian Foreign Minister, delivered in the presence of the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, after Navalny’s request for the release of Navalny, was immediately answered by the Spanish Minister, Arancha González Laya, who emphatically clarified , that “in Spain there are no political prisoners, but political prisoners”, while reminding his counterpart that Spain is one of the 23 full democracies in the world, and there are only 26, while Russia is in 124th place. 167 countries.
ANSWER
Foreign Affairs considers González Laya’s forceful response sufficient
The diplomatic sources consulted assure that the Spanish minister has not maintained any contact with her Russian counterpart and has replied in the same way that Lavrov used to make the statements that were so bad in Spain.
Those words will not be the object of any kind of protest either. And, according to sources in Spanish diplomacy, the Government is convinced that Minister Lavrov’s words were an attempt to hurt the high European representative, due to the tension in relations between Russia and the European Union as a result of the arrest de Navalny, which the EU condemns and demands his release.
The Ministry considers that the statements were produced because Borrell was Spanish
The same sources consider that Lavrov resorted to the Catalan “political prisoners”, due to the fact that Borrell is Spanish and Catalan, but would have resorted to any other event in any other country if the high representative were not Spanish.
However, diplomatic sources highlight the collusion that has been denounced so many times between Russian sectors and the Catalan independence movement, and they recall that there has been talk of Russian financing of the independentists.
Diplomatic sources recall the denunciations of destabilization from Russia
Some complaints that have also been related to “destabilization attempts” in Spain that have been detected from Russia, without the Government ever having dared to implicate the Russian authorities in these disinformation campaigns about Spain and about Procès.
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