FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Lavrov Warns, Russia Will Not Permit Ukraine-NATO Exercises on the Sea of Azov

Oct. 19, 2018 (EIRNS)—The British war party is playing with fire. Russia’s TASS and the U.S. military’s Stars and Stripes report the warning of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview yesterday with RT France, Paris Match and Le Figaro, that Russia will not permit Ukraine to host NATO military drills in the Sea of Azov, the narrow body of water which borders on Ukraine and Russia. A complete English translation of the interview is also posted to Russia’s Foreign Ministry website.

“Now Ukraine wants to hold NATO drills in the Sea of Azov, but it will be impossible to go there because our treaty with Ukraine requires mutual consent for the passage of warships into the Sea of Azov. But they want this and they are being actively goaded into this,”

TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

He said,

“[We are witnessing] an arms build-up on our borders along with the drive to upgrade the transport infrastructure in Europe so that it is easier for U.S. heavy weapons and probably weapons of other NATO countries to pick up our borders, the openly provocative military exercises—not the Russian-Chinese exercises in the middle of Siberia—but those in Ukraine, Georgia and the Black Sea.”