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The Norwegian Foreign Ministry commented on the incident in one of the hotels in Murmansk, where Consul Elisabeth Ellingsen used obscene language in front of the hotel staff, expressing dissatisfaction with the poor quality of cleaning in her room.
As it became known earlier from a video distributed on the Internet, the diplomat swore in English in the lobby of the hotel, demanding to provide her with a new room instead of the one in which she was settled. From Ellingsen’s words, it followed that in the first room the maid was negligent in her duties and the room was dirty. Taking into account the duration of the published video, it could be concluded that the hotel staff, to whom the guest expressed dissatisfaction, were in no hurryto satisfy her request. At some point, the diplomat said that she “hates Russians” and that in Norway, unlike in Russia, women keep themselves clean. The diplomat’s statements caused outrage in the State Duma, where they asked the Foreign Ministry to take “the right measures aimed at protecting our country.” The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, in turn, said that the department is already working out possible answers “to this outrageous act of hatred, nationalism and xenophobia.”
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs deeply regrets this incident,” the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said.
They stressed that the feelings expressed by their diplomat are not a reflection of Norwegian policy or the attitude of Norwegians towards Russians.
“The Ministry is working on the incident through the appropriate channels,” the representative of the press service of the Norwegian Ministry Tuva Rones Bogsnes told TASS.