Putin demands Dutch apology for beating diplomat
Print Edition
Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded an apology from the Netherlands yesterday after an attack on a Russian diplomat in The Hague by armed men over the weekend.
Russia has lodged a formal diplomatic protest over the incident, in which it said a minister-counsellor at its embassy in the Netherlands, Dmitry Borodin, was badly beaten in his home in front of his children by the unidentified assailants.
“We are awaiting an explanation, an apology and also punishment of those responsible,” Putin said at a news conference after an Asia-Pacific summit in Indonesia, calling the incident a “very rude violation” of diplomatic rules.
“Depending on how the Dutch side conducts itself, we will react,” Putin said.
The Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that the government would apologize to Russia if a police investigation found Borodin’s right to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention had been violated.
Earlier, a Dutch police spokeswoman in The Hague, Ellen van Zijl, confirmed there had been an incident involving a Russian diplomat, adding: “This man is fine. He is not in the hospital.”
Dutch news agency ANP said police had visited the home of Borodin, who is number two at the embassy, after receiving a complaint from neighbors about his treatment of his children.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Embassy in The Hague, Sofia Sarenkova, said such a complaint was “one of the pretexts” for the incident.
Sarenkova said the men who visited Borodin’s apartment were “wearing something like police uniforms” but that they did not identify themselves. She said they pushed Borodin to the ground and beat him with a baton before taking him to a police station.
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador yesterday to demand an “exhaustive explanation.”
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