The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized the Kosovo authorities over
violations of the rights of Orthodox Christians and attacks on their
churches.
"Take, for example, the situations surrounding the [Cathedral] Church of
Christ the Savior in Pristina and the Church of St. Nicholas in
Prizren. One gets the impression that the obstructing of their operation
has been raised to the status of policy by the Kosovo authorities,"
Russian envoy to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said at a meeting of the
OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, Austria.
The text of his speech was
posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website on Friday.
Against this background, Lukashevich went on, "it's no surprise that
many other churches and monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church are
regularly subjected to attacks or desecrations by Kosovo Albanian
radicals."
"The Kosovo authorities just cannot take control of them. They enable
them or even themselves encourage incitement to hatred," Lukashevich
said.