© Sputnik/ Maksim Blinov
Attempts to recruit Russian diplomats have not ceased, and sometimes these attempts are rather off-handed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday in his interview with the NTV Channel.
"Sometimes, some of our partners lose their head and decide for some reasons to punish us, as it was in the case with the 35 diplomats that were expelled by [then-] US President Barack Obama. Apparently, he tried to take it out on us for the unimaginable defeat of the democratic candidate. Attempts to approach our diplomats in order to recruit them, to make them switch to cooperative relations continue," Lavrov said, adding that sometimes such attempts happen "with undue forwardness", in the presence of the diplomats' families.
He stressed that such methods must be considered as unacceptable, and underlined that Moscow "draws attention" to each of such cases.
"In return they [US officials] complain that we here hurt their diplomats. But the way the US diplomats work in Russia is a separate topic. They have much more comfortable conditions for work here than the ones that were created over the past couple of years for our embassy and our consulates in the United States," Lavrov added.
On December 29, the Obama administration imposed a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the closure of the two Russian diplomatic compounds.
Obama said the measures were taken in response to Moscow's alleged interference in the US presidential elections. Russian officials called the allegations absurd.
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