MOSCOW, April 4 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed on Friday an alleged recording of a conversation between two Russian diplomats as a “phony compilation of sounds, subtitles and pictures” that does not deserve a commentary.
Some media sources earlier reported that a recording of an alleged conversation between two Russian ambassadors in Africa with remarks on the UN voting on Crimea resolution had been circulated on the Internet.
The ministry said that some of the pictures used in the clip were of former Soviet ambassador to US Yuri Dubinin, who died in 2013.
“It is a hastily and cynically concocted story, made in a botched up attempt to divert attention from scandals around remarks by Western diplomats on Ukraine that have recently been revealed to the public,” the ministry concluded.
In light of the current tensions over Ukraine, several recordings of phone conversations between high profile Western officials have become public, exposing their scandalous involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
In one instance, Assistant US Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland explicitly assigned roles to Ukrainian opposition leaders in the country’s future government talking to US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. Nuland finished the conversation with a derogatory remark towards the EU. She then had to officially apologize to the European counterparts for undiplomatic language.
In another instance, a taped phone conversation between Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet spread online in late February, in which Paet told Ashton that “Yanukovych was not the one behind the sniper attack, but rather someone from the new coalition.”
