Russia: U.S. no say in internal affairs

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MOSCOW, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- The United States has no place interfering with domestic Russian affairs, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Speaking with The National Interest, a bimonthly U.S. foreign policy journal, Peskov said the United States has no place in any dialog between Russia's government and opposition movements, RIA Novosti reported.

"The dialog between the Russian government and the opposition cannot be a subject of the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington, and in no way can be an issue of [state-to-state] discussion," Peskov said in an interview published Thursday.

The United States has blasted Russia for jailing of members of the punk rock group Pussy Riot over a protest in Russia's main Orthodox cathedral, as well as the treatment of protest leaders Alexei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov, both of whom are facing long jail sentences.

"Those are our domestic affairs, our domestic politics," Peskov said. "We are a democratic country sharing the same values with the whole world, but we are a country that will solve all the problems, domestic and the like, without any interference from abroad."