Moscow. April 9. INTERFAX-Russia will take measures to protect Russian citizens in the event of a war in the Donbas and the threat of mass casualties for the civilian population in this region, said the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov.
"The situation on the contact line in Ukraine is extremely unstable. The dynamics of the development of this situation and the dynamics of the behavior of the Ukrainian side create a danger of resuming full-scale hostilities, " Peskov said.
"The Ukrainian side, and this can be judged by various statements, does not completely reject the idea of a military solution to its own problem with the south-east of Ukraine," Peskov added.
"In the event of a resumption of hostilities, in the event of a potential repeat of a human catastrophe similar to Srebrenica," President Putin has already said, " no country in the world will remain on the sidelines. And all countries, including Russia, will take measures to ensure that such tragedies do not happen again, " Peskov said, answering the question under what conditions the Russian Federation will take measures to protect Russian citizens.
When asked by Ukrainian journalists what measures Russia will take in such a situation, Peskov said:: "All countries of the world, all civilized countries of the world in the event of a repeat of Srebrenica in the south-east of Ukraine will oppose this in every possible way in order to prevent a catastrophe."
Peskov stressed that this is necessary in order to prevent mass deaths.
When asked why Moscow draws parallels between the conflicts in Ukraine and in Yugoslavia, Peskov said: "On the basis of uncontrolled actions of various units of the armed forces of Ukraine, on the basis of the dominance of nationalist sentiments, on the basis of inciting absolute hatred towards the population of the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass."
According to him, "this is fraught with a repetition of such actions that we have discussed with you."
On April 8, Deputy head of the presidential administration Dmitry Kozak said that " the beginning of hostilities (in the Donbass-IF) is the beginning of the end of Ukraine, this is a crossbow-a shot not in the leg, but in the temple." He warned that Russia will be forced to stand up for its citizens in the Donbas if the situation there develops according to the Srebrenica scenario. "Today, everything depends on the scale of the fire. If there is, as our president says, Srebrenica, we will probably be forced to defend it, " Kozak said at a session of the joint project of the Primakov Institute of International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Interfax group "Russia and the World: a Professional conversation".
