At the end of May, Moscow announced the expulsion of 34 French diplomats. A retaliatory measure for the expulsions in April by France of 41 Russians, in the wake of the special operation in Ukraine, as the Kremlin says. A few days after Emmanuel Macron’s visit to kyiv, it is the cultural adviser to the French ambassador to Russia who is no longer welcome. Russian television published a report detailing what he is accused of.
With our correspondent in Moscow, Anissa El Jabri
The Russian television channel which devotes a report to the case of the cultural adviser evokes “ an extraordinary situation “. ” The police, she says, managed to find out that French diplomats have a line in their budget for expenses of political organizations in Russia every year. »
In support, this testimony of a law enforcement officer who testifies with his back to the camera, his voice modified.
They act in a rather brazen manner. The activities of organizations recognized as “foreign agents” in Russia were carried out under a program called Prism. Their goal is to promote non-traditional sexual relations and destabilize the authorities.
Another accusation: having set up hidden financing schemes for a media now banned in the country, and for the Memorial association, dissolved last winter.
Transparent financing, answered several experts on the file to our colleagues from Radio France. But regardless, the diplomat will have to pack his bags.
According to information from France info, Pierre Lévy, the French ambassador, was summoned to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was informed that the accreditation of his cultural adviser would not be renewed, and that this the latter was to leave Russian territory before July 17.
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