The US is trying to recruit Russian diplomats, said the ambassador in Washington

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov. File photo MOSCOW, May 14. Employees of the Russian embassy in the United States receive threats, including physical violence, and American intelligence officers walk around the diplomatic mission, trying to recruit them, said Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov. He compared the Russian representative office with a besieged fortress. «In principle, our embassy operates in a hostile environment … My comrades, embassy employees, receive threats, including physical violence. And American intelligence officials flirt around the Russian embassy, ​​handing out FBI and CIA phones, whom you can call to establish cooperation,» Antonov said on the air of Soloviev Live. Russian diplomats, amid a special operation in Ukraine, faced unprecedented pressure in Western countries. Provocations are regularly staged against them, and many embassy employees were also expelled. Moscow each time declares the illegality of these actions and the right to retaliate. Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine on February 24th. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. The United States wants to keep a hotbed of instability in Europe, Ambassador Antonov said