Russian Foreign Ministry warns about response to possible worsening of working conditions of Russian missions in UK

MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - A possible worsening of working conditions of the Russian diplomatic missions in the United Kingdom, including potential difficulties with access to bank accounts, will become a reason for retaliatory measures, Russian Foreign Ministry Second European Department Director Sergei Belyayev said in an interview with Interfax.

"We're consistently emphasizing that a possible worsening of working conditions of our missions abroad will become a reason for retaliatory measures based on the reciprocity principle. The same applies to the access of Russian diplomatic missions to their accounts in British banks. We're continuing to closely monitor the situation," he said.

"The sky-high degree of Russophobia in the British government and local media has a considerable impact on the views of ordinary people who have been regularly involved in protests outside the Russian Embassy in London in the past few weeks. At the same time, it is obvious that residents of the British capitals are effectively extras in these shows while radicals from the local Ukrainian diaspora play the main part. Unfortunately, acts of vandalism could not be avoided during protests. In particular, on one of the days a window of the embassy's consular department was broken," he said.

"In this light, in our contacts with the Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Moscow, we're continuing to demand that London follows the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 in order to avoid threats to security of Russian diplomatic missions in the UK," Belyayev said.