Russia has denounced the U.S. State Department's latest human rights report, which harshly criticizes the Kremlin's expansionism in Ukraine and record on civil liberties.
Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's human rights point man, called the annual report a "bossy" document riddled with ideological "cliches" and "anti-Russian stereotypes."
Washington should "finally" start solving "the huge amount of pressing problems in the area of human rights, democracy, and rule of law in the United States itself," Dolgov said in comments published April 14 on the ministry's website.
The ministry's sharp response came a day after the State Department released its annual report on the state of human rights in countries across the globe.
The report said Russia in 2015 "significantly and negatively" affected the human rights situation inside and outside its borders following its forceful annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in 2014 and its backing of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
It also said that the Kremlin last year "increasingly instituted a range of measures to suppress dissent" and "systematically...harass, discredit, prosecute, imprison, detain, fine, and suppress individuals and organizations engaged in activities critical of the government."