Russian Foreign Ministry on Blinken's remarks: This is a mental case

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented on the remarks from US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who said that Russia was allegedly forcibly keeping up to 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens on its territory.

"Estimates from a variety of sources, including the Russian government, indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained, and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainian citizens, including 260,000 children, from their homes to Russia — often to isolated regions in the Far East.  Moscow's actions appear pre-meditated and draw immediate historical comparisons to Russian "filtration” operations in Chechnya and other areas. President Putin's "filtration” operations are separating families, confiscating Ukrainian passports, and issuing Russian passports in an apparent effort to change the demographic makeup of parts of Ukraine," Blinken told reporters on July 13.

Zakharova called his remarks a mental case and said that she would need to consult a medical encyclopaedia.

"Off to consult a medical encyclopedia. A case like this one should be described somewhere,” she wrote on her Telegram channel commenting on Blinken's remarks.

Earlier, Maria Zakharova refuted Anthony Blinken's statement about Russia being isolated at the G20 summit. In her opinion, Blinken made it all up to justify his own failure.