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Russian diplomacy will have taken two weeks to react to the publication in Le Monde of an article claiming that Russian spies used the French Alps as a rear base for operations in Europe. The Russian Foreign Ministry strongly rejects these allegations.
" Propaganda ", " false information ", " conspiracy theory ": it is in these terms that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs responds to the revelations of the World. " We consider this article as misinformation aimed at maintaining the myth of the Russian threat in the minds of the general European public, " said the press release quoted by several media.
On December 4, Le Monde said that 15 Russian military intelligence officers, specialized in assassinations, had circulated on the continent from 2014 and stayed in several French cities of Haute-Savoie. One of these men was reportedly identified by the British authorities as one of the authors of the Novitchok neurotoxic poisoning of a Russian ex-spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Ioulia, in Salisbury in England in March 2018 .
No evidence for them
The Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergey Lavrov, questions the journalistic rigor of the investigation, which quotes sources resulting from intelligence. Russian diplomacy sees this as a " complete absence of evidence ", which " did not constitute an obstacle for this publication loaded with openly Russophobic content and filled with false propagandist news ".
And the Russian Foreign Ministry underlines: " It has become the " new trend " of the Western media ", when they write about espionage.
Finally, Russian diplomacy sees a link with the summit on Ukraine organized in Paris, five days after publication. " The article, writes the ministry , had the explicit aim of damaging Russia's reputation and thereby discrediting the direction planned by French President Emmanuel Macron of normalizing relations with Moscow . "