Comment by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the US complicity in the recruitment of US citizens to fight in Ukraine

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation has noted recent reports on US citizens being recruited and transferred to Ukraine, the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic to participate in hostilities, with the complicity of the White House and American intelligence services.

We are referring to the activity of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, which runs counter to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and involves overt recruitment of fighters to the so-called Foreign Legion of Territorial Defence Forces of Ukraine. According to the American media alone, since the start of the Russian special operation, about 20,000 Americans have expressed their readiness to help Kiev, and the Ukrainian diplomatic mission has officially registered more than 6,000 applications.

At the same time, according to a report by the US Customs and Border Protection, many of the Americans leaving for Ukraine consider themselves adherents of the so-called white supremacy, and are going to fight on the side of the remaining members of the Azov neo-Nazi unit.

We regard the US authorities’ complicity in such activities as further proof of Washington not being interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis, but, on the contrary, seeking to fuel the conflict and achieve Russia’s strategic defeat.

The Ukrainian attempts to portray these mercenaries for the American and European public as “foreign volunteers” look particularly cynical against this backdrop.

In this regard, we demand that the US authorities curtail this activity of the Ukrainian diplomatic mission, which poses a direct threat to the lives and security of US citizens, openly contradicts the mission’s diplomatic status, and may result in grave and unpredictable international consequences.