The Russian Foreign Ministry has issued a travel warning to the country’s citizens, warning them not to travel to the United States, as the US intelligence services recently started ‘luring’ Russian nationals abroad to bring them to court with political charges.
Russia warns its citizens to refrain from visiting the United States, Canada, and several European Union countries for the coming weeks, citing risks of being ‘hunted’ by those nations.
Issuing the warning, Russia’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed that the US intelligence services had recently started “luring” Russian nationals abroad to press political charges against them, which are not revealed to the public.
During a weekly briefing, Zakharova said that there has been “growing confrontation in Russian-American relations, which are on the verge of collapse due to Washington’s actions.” Traveling to the US on private or official missions is fraught with serious risk,” she said.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry also called for its citizens not to merely avoid non-essential trips to the US but also to avoid trips to its allied countries, such as Canada and some European Union countries, during the forthcoming holiday season and beyond.
She branded these countries as US “satellites” and said this was the ministry’s first travel advisory linked to potential prosecutions.
