Turkish president slams attacks on Russian cultural workers as unacceptable

Erdogan

ANKARA, March 11. /TASS/: Attacks on Russian cultural figures are unacceptable, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at the opening ceremony of a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Friday.

"Fascistic actions against people of Russian descent and Russian cultural figures living in the Western world are completely unacceptable. Look at the situation where a philharmonic orchestra director gets fired in Germany as a friend of Putin’s? Is it nonsense? They are banning Dostoevsky's works. Is it nonsense?" Erdogan said.

The Turkish president earlier compared such actions to "a witch hunt."

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on March 6 that Russian embassies had been facing cyberattacks for months, actually living under a blockade. According to her, diplomatic mission workers, Russian compatriots and cultural activists have been receiving threats and "envelopes with unknown substances."

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation based on a request from the heads of the Donbass republics. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories and the goal was to demilitarize and denazify the country.