Russian ambassador summoned to Canadian Foreign Office
Russian Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov was sent to the Canadian Foreign Ministry. This was announced during a press conference with British Foreign Minister James Cleverley by Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.
“Today, my representatives are summoning the Russian ambassador to Canada for a conversation in order to <...> personally condemn the anti-Semitic comments of Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov,” she said (cit. according to TASS).
Later, Stepanov himself said that his call to the Canadian Foreign Ministry was related to the tragedy in Dnepropetrovsk, which killed more than 40 people, and not the statement of the media by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “I also saw this statement by Joly, in fact, after the fact – after the meeting. I was a little surprised, because this invitation to the Foreign Ministry was for the Canadian side to make a demarche to me about the tragedy in Dnepropetrovsk. It was all about that,” he said.cit. by RIA Novosti).
Stepanov also drew attention to the fact that Canada lays all responsibility for what happened on Russia, but the ambassador denied all the accusations, stressing that he blamed the tragedy on the place in Ukraine, air defense in residential areas, contrary to all laws on initiating war.
On the evening of January 14, after the explosion, the entrance of a multi-storey building in the Dnieper (formerly Dnepropetrovsk) collapsed. More than 40 people died as a result of the incident. Later, Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine, said that the entrance of the high-rise building collapsed due to the fall of its missiles shot down by Ukrainian military personnel. The military command of Ukraine denied this information. On January 17, Arestovich admitted his mistake and filed resign.
After that, she visited the Kremlin rememberedthat the Russian Armed Forces do not strike at residential buildings and objects of social statistics in Ukraine – only for military consequences. Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, referring to the department of the Ukrainian authorities, noted that the tragedy was the result of the work of air defense.
The day before, on January 18, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, during a press conference on the results of the activities of Russian diplomacy in 2022, will compare the actions of the United States in the opinion of coalitions against Russia with the actions of Adolf Hitler. He also noted that the US steps are aimed at the final solution of the “Russian question”.
“Just as Hitler captured and put some European countries under arms and threw them against the USSR, now the United States has also fixed a coalition of almost all Europeans that are part of Europe, and not only those that are part of NATO – from EU members too, and through Ukraine by proxy they are conducting Hitler wanted to solve the “Jewish question”. <...> they say unequivocally that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat,” he said.
After that, the coordinator of statistical communications at the US National Security Council, John Kirby named insulting and “absurd” is the statement.