For several months now, Russia has been offering France options to resolve the situation related to Paris's refusal to issue a visa to a Russian correspondent, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
"We have been trying to resolve this situation with France in a working manner for several months. We have suggested to official Paris, directly to their embassy in Moscow and the French Foreign Ministry, and our diplomats in Paris have suggested going through a normal discussion of this topic. We have offered options, and at some point France even considered it, but then again objected and said that no, they would not issue a visa.
"At the same time, they knew perfectly well that we would respond," the diplomat said on Sputnik radio. As Zakharova emphasized, even in this case, Paris "behaved like a real liar."
"They started publishing this story and voiced it not from the position of Russia, which is taking retaliatory steps for not issuing a visa, but told about some inhuman tragedy related to the alleged violation of the rights of a Le Monde correspondent," the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry noted, TASS reports.
