According to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, the situation is “incomprehensible”. “The American authorities have not yet agreed on the arrival of the plane. We expect the Americans to quickly issue the authorization for the flight of the plane without any conditions or restrictions,” said the head of the diplomatic mission, commenting on the current state of affairs. business.
He also drew attention to the fact that the American side has not yet issued visas either to the members of the delegation or to the journalists supposed to accompany the minister. According to Antonov, a corresponding request was sent to the US Embassy in Moscow last March. “Nevertheless, not a single entry permit has been issued so far,” the ambassador said. “There was an agreement to invite representatives of the domestic media to the US diplomatic mission on March 31 to review their visa applications. However, within a day, the reception was canceled without explanation,” the diplomat added. , recalling that there were only a few days before the event, and there was no progress.
“We urge Washington to immediately issue visas to our delegation, as well as to journalists. Failure to issue them is a violation of the United States’ obligations as host country of the UN headquarters, which hampers the proper functioning of the world organization,” Antonov said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has already drawn attention to visa problems. “No visa has been issued yet. Not a single visa has been issued,” he told reporters on Wednesday April 12.
According to the spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, Stéphane Dujarric, the organization expects the United States to fulfill its obligations as a host country. However, he acknowledged that in the past there had been problems with admitting foreign diplomats to the United States. “We raised them directly with the host country,” Dujarric said.
It should be noted that Russian diplomats literally faced such problems last month. In early March, the United States denied visas to a number of delegates who planned to attend an information and communications technology working group at UN headquarters.
However, Washington created such obstacles long before the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West. So, in August 2015, the United States issued a visa to Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko, who was supposed to lead the Russian delegation at events organized within the framework of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in New York, which n was only valid for three days. In addition, under the pretext that she is under sanctions, she was forbidden to move freely in the city, fixing a radius of 25 kilometers from downtown Manhattan. As a result, the Russian delegation completely refused to visit the United States. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the actions of US authorities unacceptable.
In 2018, Washington refused entry to a Russian citizen who was appointed to a position in the UN Secretariat. And this is after the US side delayed issuing a visa for an entire year, creating problems for the world organization itself.
In April 2019, the US Embassy denied a visa to the UN Secretary General’s Russian expert consultant, Biology Doctor Dmitry Poklonsky, who was to speak at a special briefing at a meeting of the UN Security Council with an analysis of the report. of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons mission on the incident in the Syrian city of Douma . As was pointed out in Smolenskaya Square at the time, “US authorities were clearly trying to prevent the dissemination of objective information about the Duma incident from the UN rostrum.”
During this year 2019 (May), the United States denied visas to several Russian diplomats who were to attend the Preparatory Committee for the Conference of the Parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York. And then, already in September, not all members of the Russian delegation were allowed to attend the UN General Assembly.
History repeated itself in December 2021, when diplomats scheduled to attend the session of the Open-Ended Working Group on Advances in Computerization and Telecommunications in International Security been refused visas.
In September 2022, during the high-level week of the General Assembly session, Russian diplomats received visas only at the last moment, and by no means all. Yes, and this happened only after the Russian side appealed directly to UN Secretary General António Guterres.
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