MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - Moscow and Washington continue sharing information over prisoner swaps as and when necessary, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday.
"Recently, all sorts of speculation aimed at maximally heating up the atmosphere and securing, if you will, a certain swaying of the domestic situation, including in the run-up to our elections, have essentially continued on a daily basis," Ryabkov told journalists in Moscow.
He was responding to a question on if there had been any progress in Russian-U.S. prisoner swap discussions, in particular, in relation to a number of media reports that said the U.S. previously proposed adding Alexei Navalny to the list.
"There were no grounds for this sort of speculation and especially there are none now, and all matters [regarding] prisoner swaps are considered via a specialized channel of the security services, which is still in place, and information and signals pass through it as and when necessary, too," Ryabkov said.