MOSCOW, 14 Feb: Russia on Tuesday angrily rejected the Moldovan president\u2019s claims about an alleged plot by Moscow to overthrow her government and accused Moldovan authorities of trying to distract public attention away from the country\u2019s own domestic problems.
\nMoldova\u2019s President Maia Sandu said Monday that the purported Russian plot envisioned attacks on government buildings, hostage-takings and other violent actions by groups of saboteurs in order to put the nation \u201cat the disposal of Russia\u201d and derail its hopes to join the European Union.
\nResponding Tuesday, Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakha-rova dismissed Sandu\u2019s claims as \u201cabsolutely unfou-nded and unsubstantiated.\u201d
\n\u201cThey are built in the spirit of classical techniques that are often used by the United States, other Western countries and Ukraine,\u201d Zakharova said. \u201cFirst, accusations are made with reference to purportedly classified intelligence information that cannot be verified, and then they are used to justify their own illegal actions.\u201d
\nSandu\u2019s claim came a week after neighboring Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country had intercepted plans by Russian secret services to destroy Moldova. Moldovan intelligence officials later said that they confirmed the allegations.
\nZakharova charged that Ukrainian authorities made up the claim about a purpor-ted Russian plan to destabi-lize Moldova in order to draw it into a confrontation with Russia. She argued that Moldovan authorities used \u201cthe myth about a Russian threat to distract Moldovan citizens\u2019 attention from inter-nal problems resulting from a disastrous social-economic course of the current administration and to step up the fight against dissent and political opponents.\u201d
\nZakharova insisted that Russia poses no threat to Moldova and hopes to develop mutually beneficial cooperation.
\nSince Russian troops rolled into Ukraine nearly a year ago, Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million people, has sought to forge closer ties with its Western partners. Last June, it was granted EU member-ship candidate status, the same day as Ukraine.
\nIn December, Moldova\u2019s national intelligence agency warned that Russia could launch a new offensive with the aim of creating a land corridor through southern Ukraine to Moldova\u2019s Moscow-backed breakaway region of Transnistria.
\nTransnistria broke away after a 1992 civil war but is not recognized by most countries. It extends roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the eastern bank of the Dniester River to the country\u2019s border with Ukraine. Russia has about 1,500 troops nominally as \u201cpeacekeepers\u201d in the breakaway region. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW, 14 Feb: Russia on Tuesday angrily rejected the Moldovan president\u2019s claims about an alleged plot by Moscow to overthrow her government and accused Moldovan authorities of trying to distract public attention away from the country\u2019s own domestic problems. Moldova\u2019s President Maia Sandu said Monday that the purported Russian plot envisioned attacks on government buildings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-210991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}