Moscow Says Ex-US Assistant State Secretary Nuland Denied Visa Over Tit-For-Tat Entry Ban

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th May, 2019) Victoria Nuland, a former US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, who planned to attend a conference in Moscow earlier in May, has been denied a Russian visa since she is on the blacklist introduced as part of a tit-for-tat response to Washington's sanctions, the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik.

"Nuland has been denied a Russian visa, since she is on the blacklists introduced in response to similar measures of the United States," the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Kommersant newspaper reported that Nuland had applied for a Russian visa to take part in an international conference organized by the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the German Council on Foreign Relations and Johns Hopkins University's school of Advanced International Studies.

The event was held in Moscow from May 20-21.

RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov, in turn, told Sputnik that Nuland had been invited because the council was unaware of her being blacklisted. After the council contacted the Foreign Ministry, which said that the former senior US official had been under visa restrictions and recommended against booking tickets, the council informed Nuland about it, according to Kortunov.

Along with economic sanctions slapped on Russia over the 2014 Ukraine crisis, the United States has introduced visa bans on a number of the country's senior officials. Moscow has responded proportionally but has not publicly revealed its blacklists, which results in a situation when US officials learn about the restrictions only after applying for visas.