Western support for Ukrainian nationalists has emboldened similar groups across Europe, the Russian Foreign Ministry says
FILE PHOTO: French riot police stand guard during clashes in Lyon © JEFF PACHOUD / AFP
Some of the French weapons supplied to Ukraine have made their way back to the country that sent them, and are being used by rioters to attack police, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has claimed.
Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday, Maria Zakharova said the years-long support of radical Ukrainian nationalists by Western countries has emboldened like-minded forces on their own soil.
“According to multiple media reports, neo-Nazi groups are taking direct action in the riots in France,” she said.
“Weapons, delivered to Kiev, end up in the hands of those very protesters and are being used against the police there, in France,” Zakharova added, without specifying the type of arms involved.
Weapons and funds provided to the “Kiev regime” by the US and its allies “boomerang and… damage their own people,” Zakharova stated, adding that Moscow has been warning about the risk of a spillover for a long time. Paris “is fueling the black market for arms and sponsors international cross-border crime” with its assistance to Kiev, she claimed.
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France may suffer similar blowback after training “nationalist militants” to fight Russian forces, Zakharova warned, noting that Paris plans to teach combat tactics to some 4,000 Ukrainian troops this year alone.
“Nobody should be surprised, if the same [French-trained people] would be spotted during some future riot in the streets of Paris and other French cities,” she stated.
The latest wave of street violence in France was triggered by the police shooting of a 17-year-old man of Algerian and Moroccan descent. Moscow has condemned both the police brutality, which it believes set the stage for the violence, and the mayhem caused by the protesters.
France, Zakharova concluded, should stop lecturing other nations on how they should uphold the rule of law and deal with its own domestic problems.
