Three EU nations persecuting Russian speakers – Moscow
he Baltic states have been displaying “extreme Russophobia,” harassing even Russian-speaking children, a senior diplomat says | Moscow will not sever diplomatic relations with Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania despite the “extreme Russophobia” rampant in the three Baltic states, since such a move would effectively mean “abandoning our compatriots in trouble,” the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second European Department, Sergei Belyayev, has said. ● The senior diplomat made the remarks in an interview with TASS published on Saturday. Moscow downgraded diplomatic relations with the three countries a year ago, in response to repeated hostile acts on their part, with the country’s missions currently led by their respective chargés d’affaires, Belyayev noted. ● “Today, our diplomatic missions in the Baltic states operate in extremely difficult, effectively siege conditions,” the diplomat explained. ● The Russian missions there have been repeatedly vandalized, with russophobic pickets held outside the facilities on an almost daily basis and employees attacked on several occasions. The hostile activities have been going on with the “connivance of local authorities” and no real action to stop them has been taken, Belyayev added.