The United States' inclusion of Russia on its list of countries that are not recommended for travel might have been connected to this summer's FIFA World Cup in Russia, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said Thursday, commenting on the recent removal of Russia from the list.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2018) The United States' inclusion of Russia on its list of countries that are not recommended for travel might have been connected to this summer's FIFA World Cup in Russia, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said Thursday, commenting on the recent removal of Russia from the list.
"Maybe they tried to do this, maybe it was connected to the World Cup? A big event. To not allow people come and watch football. May be it was connected to that? The recommendation is no longer needed now that the World Cup is over? Hard to say," Zakharova said during the briefing.
Zakharova added that now this "absurd story" was over and questioned the intentions of US authorities.
"This can be qualified as the end of an absurd story, I cannot say anything more to you on this topic. Again, what was the US side trying to fixate by implementing these recommendations? Hard to say," Zakharova noted.
On December 10, the US Department of State announced that Russia was removed from its list of countries which US citizens were advised to "reconsider travel" to. Now Russia is in the second security level group named "Increased Caution."
Following this announcement, speaker of the Russian parliament's upper house Valentina Matviyenko said that she expected more US tourists to visit Russia after the cancellation of the discouraging recommendation by US Department of State.
The FIFA World Cup was held in several Russian cities on June 14-July 15.
