Russia denounces the use of double standards in the human rights sphere, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko told reporters on Thursday.

Moscow "proceeds from the necessity to de-politicize the human rights sphere.... It is absolutely inadmissible to use human rights as an instrument of political pressure or for squaring accounts," Yakovenko was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

"Russia is opposed to the attempts by certain countries and groups of countries and nongovernmental organizations to impose on the international community their own approaches in the human rights sphere under the pretense of universal standards," he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the U.S. State Department report on human rights and democracy in the world is politicized in nature..

"The section of the document dealing with Russia applies a whole arsenal of simple logical methods -- exaggeration, selection of facts to support conclusions formulated in advance, the substitution of notions, arbitrary interpretation of facts and some others to convince the U.S. and international public that Russia urgently needs democratization," the statement said.