Ukraine. Airspace closed to Lavrov’s plane: Moscow castigates a “scandalous” measure – Ouest-France

Moscow denounced on Monday June 6 the “scandalous” and “hostile” closure by three European countries of their airspace to the plane which was to take to Serbia the head of Russian diplomacy Sergey Lavrov, targeted by European sanctions because of the offensive in Ukraine. Such hostile acts towards our country are capable of causing certain problems […], but they cannot prevent our diplomacy from continuing its work, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “The inconceivable has happened,” said Sergei Lavrov at a press conference, deeming this measure “scandalous”. “A sovereign state has been deprived of its right to exercise its foreign policy. Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro, all three NATO members, have closed their airspace to Sergei Lavrov’s plane which was due to fly to Serbia for a two-day visit, citing imposed sanctions by Brussels to Russia after the start of its offensive in Ukraine on February 24. “No one can destroy our relations with Serbia” « The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria […] did not give diplomatic authorization for the overflight of Bulgarian territory for Russian planes,” Bulgarian diplomacy said in a statement, defending a decision “in line with the EU sanctions regime against Russia.” The other two countries informed Russian embassies of similar decisions. The head of Russian diplomacy, who was supposed to meet Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, his counterpart Nikola Selakovic and the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije in Belgrade, was forced to cancel his visit. “If a visit by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs is perceived in the West as a quasi-global threat, this apparently means that everything is very bad there,” Sergei Lavrov joked during his press conference. He added that he had invited the head of Serbian diplomacy Nikola Selakovic to go to Russia “as soon as possible”. “No one can destroy our relations with Serbia,” he stressed. Moscow is not going to follow the example of the West, assures Lavrov Konstantin Kosatchev, vice-president of the Council of the Federation, the upper house of the Russian parliament, denounced on Monday a “step by NATO” directed “against Russia as a as a State and Serbia as a State” and called for a “common and extremely severe reaction” which would result “in practical, concrete actions”. For his part, Sergei Lavrov assured that Russia was not going to follow the example of its “Western partners”. “As far as possible responses are concerned, we are not going to do anything that risks further complicating the links between peoples. The head of the Serbian government, Ana Brnabic, said on Sunday that the situation around this visit was “exceptionally complicated” due to the impossibility of overflights of certain countries and that the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic was himself working on the organization of the visit. Sergei Lavrov has been targeted since February 25, the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by EU sanctions, as has President Vladimir Putin. At the end of February, the head of Russian diplomacy, who was to participate in the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, had already had to cancel his visit to Switzerland because of the sanctions. prohibit overflight of the European Union. Ukraine. Airspace closed to Lavrov’s plane: Moscow castigates “scandalous” measure