Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov raised the matter of the planned terrorist actions against President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Andrey Belousov on Navy Day July 28, which were probably called off after Belousov made a phone call to U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin to inform him of the planned Ukrainian operation. “This concrete episode—was extremely disturbing,” Ryabkov told International Affairs. “As these events tend to do, it was planned in connection with our domestic events in order to cause maximum damage and attain the maximum possible media effect.”
Responding to a question from the reporter about how this was connected to the Navy Day Parade, Ryabkov said, “I don’t want to go more deeply into details, but in principle, there was a certain connection with these kinds of events.”
