Lavrova not let three countries through the airspace, raging in parliament: Words about extremely harsh reaction – Nový Čas

The chairman of the foreign committee of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosačov, is demanding that Russia and Serbia react jointly and “extremely harshly” to the ban on the flight of the plane with the head of Russian diplomacy through the airspace of the three Balkan states. In his post in the Telegram application, Kosačov expressed the hope that this joint response would be “not only in the form of diplomatic protests, but also concrete, practical answers”. According to Kosakov, the ban on Lavrov’s plane was allegedly enforced by the NATO alliance, which forced Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro not to allow the plane with the Russian minister to fly to Serbia. Kosačov wrote in the Telegram application: “We are talking about a NATO démarche – and without the United States it could not happen.” The Russian politician subsequently accused NATO of “directly interfering” in bilateral relations between Russia and Serbia and of “trying to seize and conquer the rest of Europe.” Senator Kososov added that Bulgaria, Montenegro and Northern Macedonia had joined the decision to join the “gravediggers of the real European dream”, which he said were Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland and the Baltic states. Lavrov also criticized European countries for blocking his plane on its way to Serbia. “Something unimaginable has happened … the sovereign state has been deprived of (its) right to pursue (its) foreign policy,” Lavrov told an online news conference in Moscow, AFP reported on Monday. The Kremlin also condemned the closure of the airspace for Lavrov on Monday and called him a hostile move. However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said that such action would not be able to significantly affect Russia’s relations with friendly countries. He stressed that Russia and Serbia will continue their contacts. According to the Serbian media, TASR reported on Monday night that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučič should also comment on the cancellation of Lavrov’s visit to Belgrade on Monday evening.