MOSCOW, August 15. /TASS/: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called "utter nonsense" attempts to connect not renewing work visa to BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford with her questions about Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at his recent press conference.
"This is such utter nonsense because it all happened within literally a day or two. We were still trying to get her back to Russia, we helped her with this. I don’t want to engage in conspiracy theories and think that BBC sent her there on purpose, let the analysts do this," she said in an interview with TV Rain.
According to Zakharova, Moscow's decision in the situation with Rainsford has nothing to do with her journalistic activities, but the fact that she is returning to the UK is "solely and only due to her homeland." "This had nothing to do with what she wrote, how she wrote it, how she works, what kind of person she is, what political views she has. This was a countermeasure. The person’s visa was running out, we warned her several times, we talked about it. Unfortunately, we were not heard, and such decision was made," Zakharova said.
She added that Moscow had been proposing to the UK "to unblock the visa issue with journalists" for a very long time. "Our goal is to issue visas, issue accreditations, and be open to comments. It is not our choice to engage in such ‘exchanges of journalists’," Zakharova concluded.
Earlier on Saturday Zakharova said that the decision not to renew BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford’s visa was just a tit-for-tat measure. "Let me emphasize again that the Russian measure (unlike the British imitative) is purely retaliatory. It has nothing to do with infringement of the freedom of expression," she wrote on her Telegram channel.
Zakharova said earlier that Rainsford’s words that Rainsford would not be able to come back to Russia were manipulation, as the Russian side never told her that. Moscow will issue a working visa to Rainsford as soon as London does the same for Russian correspondent, Zakharova promised.
According to Bloomberg, Sarah Rainsford’s visa is expiring on August 31.
