Taking Russia off the list of countries where Americans should "reconsider travel" was a good end to one of the absurd stories of Russian-American relations, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, answering a question from Vestnik Kavkaza at a news briefing.
"Taking off the list can be qualified as the end of an absurd story. It is difficult to say what the U.S. tried to do by introducing these recommendations - perhaps it was directly related to the World Cup, a major international event, so that no one would go to it. The Cup ended, accordingly, the recommendation is no longer needed. Such things can not be analysed seriously," she noted in the first place, comparing the recommendation not to travel to Russia with prejudices against modern Chechnya.
"We regularly hold press tours and invite journalists to the most diverse Russian regions, hosting major events and forums - but when Chechnya comes up and I ask if they were in Grozny, the majority of western journalists tell me: "No, because it’s dangerous there." I wonder: "Are you kidding?" They answer me: "Of course, not." But even in the 90s and in the early 2000s hundreds of Westerners journalists came to Chechnya, although it was really dangerous there at that time. In the press service we had a special department to escort journalists to the counterterrorist operation zone, we have armor vests, helmets. At that time, for some reason, nothing could stop hundreds of Western reporters from visiting Chechnya. And now it’s absurd that Chechnya suddenly became dangerous to visit when it’s a flourishing capital city with everything you need," Maria Zakharova explained.
"In the mid and late 1990s, trips to Chechnya were extremely dangerous, not only because of the fighting, but also because the main business of militants was based on the abduction of journalists. The abduction immediately caused a public outcry, a media outlet where this journalist worked focused on this topic, the militants demanded million of dollars - it was real human trafficking. But journalists still traveled there," the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry recalled.
"Now, Western journalists are simply not interested in Chechnya. They write nonsense about life in Chechnya, but it’s not interesting for them to visit it. Its alleged danger is simply motivation — although this is not true," Maria Zakharova concluded.
