Speed Reads

take a chill pill

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs tells the State Department to 'calm down'

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs aired its grievances with the U.S. State Department in a snarky tweet Wednesday, imploring the American agency to "calm down."

"Your propaganda machine is out of control," the MFA wrote to Heather Nauert, the State Department's spokeswoman. "You're spamming all of us."

The call-out was in response to Nauert tweeting a video that accused Russia of ignoring a United Nations ceasefire vote in Syria and conducting 20 daily bombings in Damascus and Eastern Ghouta.

The MFA Twitter account also retweeted the official account of the Russian embassy in the U.S., which claimed that Nauert had "distorted the reality" regarding a requested meeting between Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

While the MFA account doesn't often engage in Twitter spats, it wasn't the first time the State Department was on the receiving end of a scathing message from Russia's foreign affairs representative. "Why are you interfering? Surely, Europeans can speak for themselves," the account tweeted last week in response to a post about gas supplies.