Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed as \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d recent allegations claiming Moscow was involved in last year\u2019s Montenegro coup attempt, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was \u201cirresponsible \u201d to make such accusations.<\/p>\n
his comes after British newspaper the Telegraph published a report on Sunday which claimed Moscow had conspired to overthrow Montenegro\u2019s government. Senior UK government sources claimed that Russia plotted to assassinate Montenegro’s prime minister and overthrow its government last autumn, allegedly \u201cto sabotage the country’s plan to join NATO.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Last November, Montenegrin authorities announced they had foiled a coup attempt and arrested some 50 people from Montenegro, Serbia and Russia during the country’s parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n \u201cThe [Telegraph article] you mentioned stands in the same line as yet another unfounded accusations against us and our country, including hacking attacks against the entire West, interventions in the election campaigns of the majority of Western countries, the Trump administration\u2019s ties with Russian special services and many others. [Yet] none of these unsubstantiated allegations have been supported by any facts,<\/em>\u201d Lavrov told reporters on Monday, commenting on the Telegraph report.<\/p>\n The Russian Embassy in London earlier also rejected the report as \u201cpure innuendo.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The entire report is a recycling of long discarded news in order to \u201cto stoke tensions with Russia,\u201d <\/em>the Russian embassy said on Sunday. Previously, Moscow had already \u201ccategorically denied the possibility of official involvement in any attempts to commit any unlawful activities\u201d <\/em>during parliamentary elections in Montenegro in October 2016.<\/p>\n The Telegraph published its\u00a0report citing unnamed \u201csenior Whitehall sources,\u201d but last week Montenegro prosecutor Milivoje Katnic openly accused Moscow of orchestrating the coup attempt, according to AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cSo far we have had evidence that Russian nationalist structures were behind [the plot], but now also that Russian state bodies were involved at a certain level,\u201d<\/em> Katnic told local media on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that making such statements without intending to provide proof to back them is irresponsible for an official.<\/p>\n \u201cDay after day we hear absurd accusations against Russia; day after day we disprove them. With all due responsibility, we declare that there can be no talk of the involvement of official Moscow or any officials from Russia in the internal events in Montenegro.<\/em><\/p>\n Russia did not, does not, and will not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, especially such as Montenegro, with whom we have very good relations. We regret that such accusations come from officials. They are too serious to utter them without supporting them with any reliable information. This is, at the very least, irresponsible,<\/em>\u201d Peskov told reporters in a daily press call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed as \u201cunsubstantiated\u201d recent allegations claiming Moscow was involved in last year\u2019s Montenegro coup attempt, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was \u201cirresponsible \u201d to make such accusations. his comes after British newspaper the Telegraph published a report on Sunday which claimed Moscow had conspired to overthrow Montenegro\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":10770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}