MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has castigated the US for its failure to grant visas to some Russian delegates to the UN General Assembly in New York as a 'shameful' move, recalling that the US delegation to Sochi had been issued 200 visas.
Zakharova published on her Facebook page a comment by a US State Department official in connection with the latest visa row. The official said the US took its obligations under the UNHQ Agreement "seriously" and evaluated each visa application "on a case by case basis," and data on this was confidential.
"Do you know what "taking obligations seriously" means along with "evaluating visa applications on a case by case basis"? This is when the US delegation led by Mike Pompeo was issued 200 visas for a visit to Sochi [in May 2019]," Zakharova wrote.
"But to first accept passports and then give them back with an explanation "too early" and then take them and as a result failing to issue some 10 visas without any clear reason to people whose duties are directly linked to the UN work, it’s a shame, as Sergey Lavrov has said," she noted.
Several members of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament), including Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev, were not issued US visas and won’t be able to take part in the UN General Assembly session in New York. Kosachev told TASS that 10 Russian delegates had failed to receive their visas. According to him, the documents were at the US Embassy and they had not been prepared by the departure on Tuesday.
In his turn, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described the situation as unacceptable, calling for a tough response by Moscow and the United Nations, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has slammed the incident as a shameful act.
