Diplomats of the Russian Embassy in North Korea cannot receive necessary medication or return home amid strict measures adopted by the Asian nation's authorities to tackle the COVID-19 threat, Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora said on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th June, 2020) Diplomats of the Russian Embassy in North Korea cannot receive necessary medication or return home amid strict measures adopted by the Asian nation's authorities to tackle the COVID-19 threat, Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora said on Monday.
According to the ambassador, the North Korean authorities have taken stringent measures that "successfully prevented the entry of the virus into the country." The diplomat noted, however, that those measures have affected the Russian mission in Pyongyang.
�"Our staff have not rotated for a long time. Those who should have left cannot return to their homeland, and those who should come to replace them are living out of suitcases. But this is not the worst and not the most difficult part. The problem is that we do not receive medicines that we should have received, we do not receive property, equipment, and materials that are being used here for major repairs of the embassy, and repairs remain unfinished, unfortunately. We don't get the funding that we critically need here," Matsegora said in an online interview.
The diplomat explained that the Russian government was unable to send funding to the mission due to the closure of the borders.
"We hope that our Korean friends from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will take our problems seriously, especially since our Embassy is the largest here. Therefore, we hope that our Korean friends will treat us accordingly, and they will finally help us solve these problems," Matsegora added.
