Helsinki is seemingly ready to violate any principles to follow the collective West’s drive against Russia, Maria Zakharova says
© Sputnik / Ramil Sitdikov
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has condemned Finland’s plans to impose a blanket ban on Russian nationals buying property in the country, slamming the potential move as an “inherently segregationist action.”
Zakharova provided a comment on the matter in an official statement on Saturday, speaking about plans first floated by Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen last month.
“In Helsinki, such discriminatory initiatives are clumsily justified by “national security interests,” Zakharova stated, acknowledging that no actual action regarding the potential real estate purchase ban had been taken by Helsinki yet.
“It remains unclear how exactly the desire to legitimize inherently segregationist actions directed against certain categories of people solely on the basis of their citizenship is combined in the minds of the authors of this initiative with still active provisions of Finnish legislation on human rights,” Zakharova said.
Helsinki is apparently only seeking to blindly follow the collective West’s “absurd” drive to cancel everything Russian, the spokeswoman suggested. While doing so, Finland is apparently ready to “recklessly neglect” the principles of “freedom, democracy and the inviolability of private property” it proclaims, she concluded.
The initiative to ban all Russians from buying real estate in the country was voiced by Hakkanen back in January. The minister said a final decision on the matter may possibly materialize as soon as this spring, claiming it was a matter of “national security” for the country.
“Several Russian [real estate] transactions have been found to have links that are problematic for national security,” Hakkanen claimed, arguing that “a total ban would be better” given that “not everything can be always found out.”