MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - The Russian Prosecutor General's Office considers it necessary to tighten the responsibility for manifestations of Russophobia in foreign countries, the Office's head of department overseeing compliance with the federal security, interethnic relations, counter-extremism and terrorism legislations, Yury Khokhlov, said.
"Considering that this phenomenon (Russophobia) has grown so widespread and quite unseemly in many countries of the West, we think it is necessary to tighten the responsibility, of course," Khokhlov told the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights' standing commission for international cooperation on Tuesday.
He stressed the need to work more thoroughly both on the expediency of separate legislation regulating the effort to counter Russophobia, and the meaning of the notion itself, not least "for the avoidance of its unjustified interpretation as one having to do with a specific ethnicity, although people of various ethnicities fall victim to this aversion, either because of using the Russian language or belonging to the Russian culture."
"We are ready to take part in devising mechanisms to remove possible gaps in the legal regulation of this sphere, i.e. we are ready to work and tighten responsibility," Khokhlov said.