Following the string of explicit, bucket-of-cold-water warnings to the West by Russian President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov regarding the consequences of continuing to cross Russia’s red lines, two additional diplomatic flares were sent up on June 5 by Russian Foreign Ministry officials.
In an interview with Izvestia the head of Russia’s Delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, Konstantin Gavrilov, said that if Germany decides to eventually provide Kiev with Taurus long-range cruise missiles, which he considers likely, Moscow will respond. “The president spoke quite clearly about the consequences of all this during his visit to Uzbekistan when he warned Western ‘non-partners’ that they are densely populated,” Gavrilov said. “Some of them have already lost their minds, and we need them to think about the consequences of using long-range weapons on Russian territory. There is a limit to everything—our president and foreign minister have spoken clearly on this matter. Let [the West] think seriously before doing this,” he added.
For his part, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told TASS that the West is trying to organize another Maidan-style destabilization in Georgia: “We can see attempts by the Westerners to escalate the situation in Georgia ahead of the parliamentary elections set for October. We don’t rule out that the goal is to try to implement a ‘Maidan-like’ scenario for a change of government in order to create another hotbed of tensions near Russia’s border.” He added that the overt intervention by Western diplomats in Tbilisi is so shameless that “it’s hard to describe this as anything but blatant interference in the domestic affairs of an independent country. These are disgusting examples of neo-colonial practices of imposing their views on the countries whose sovereignty they seek to limit.”
