An American woman who accused US President Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her has flown to Moscow and is seeking Russian citizenship.
Speaking to a state-run Russian news outlet, Tara Reade, 59, said she felt safe in the country and wanted to stay.
Ms Reade alleged Mr Biden assaulted her while she was working in his congressional office in 1993.
He strongly denied her allegation. "Unequivocally it never, never happened," he said.
Ms Reade worked as an assistant to Mr Biden when he was a senator for Delaware. She made headlines in 2020 as his presidential campaign was getting under way, when she claimed that he assaulted her in a Capitol Hill corridor when she was 29.
She accused him of forcing her against a wall and putting his hands under her shirt and skirt.
"When I got off the plane in Moscow, for the first time in a very long time I felt safe, and I felt heard and felt respected," The Guardian newspaper quotes Ms Reade as saying during an interview with Sputnik.
She said she left the US after a Republican politician told her she was in physical danger.