Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared on Rossiya-1 TV’s “Moscow.Kremlin.Putin.” prorgram yesterday in an interview, in which he emphasized that Russia will not tolerate further provocations like that in the Black Sea with f the HMS Defender on June 23.
At one point, he blamed it entirely on the United States. “I think our intelligence certainly knows who made a decision there [in the situation with the British destroyer]. But certainly I think such operations are basically planned by senior partners from overseas,” he said, reported TASS. According to him, “in this case the destroyer was just a tool of provocation.”
He vowed that Russia will respond harshly to provocations similar to the incident with the British destroyer. “This is indeed so,” Peskov said, referring to Putin’s earlier statement that it was a deliberate provocation. “And most importantly, as the President said, that information that the [U.S.] reconnaissance plane obtained is not that information that they sought to get, but this was that information that the Russian side believed it necessary to provide,” Peskov said. “Someone even joked [during the event] that the President will now give the first and last names of this plane’s pilots and even their address.”
Peskov agreed that Kiev is also carrying out flagrant anti-Russian provocations. “Ukraine’s effort to stir up the situation is a reality, a sad reality in the conditions that we have to face,” he said, stressing that in response to provocations Russian President Vladimir Putin “takes decisions, which won’t be left unnoticed.”
“I mean both our maneuvers and our drills, but the only difference is that this happens on our own territory and we don’t deploy our military infrastructure on other continents,” he pointed out. “In this respect, no one should probably have any doubt about resolute steps of President Putin and the Russian side in general. I still suggest not to speak about such apocalyptic scenarios as the Caribbean crisis and so on, because probably, every time Russia’s resolute steps become more clear for our opponents. Although we don’t have rose-colored glasses and understand that no one will give up an effort to contain our country,” Peskov emphasized.
