Two influential Moscow lawmakers have reacted with threats to the idea that the Republic of Moldova could join NATO, after a Russian senator also threatened a day ago that President Maia Sandu risks repeating the “suicidal politics” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi.

“Usually we react to the actions that are taking place. Recently, Moldova has upset us with a number of its decisions,” Svitlana Jurova, a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and first deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Foreign Affairs in Moscow, told Vedomosti newspaper, the lower house of parliament. of the Russian Parliament, News.ro reported on Tuesday.

The deputy noted that she is sure that the Russian Foreign Ministry “will know how to respond” (to President Maia Sandu’s statements).

51-year-old Svitlana Dzhurova is a former athlete, Olympic champion in speed skating, who at the end of her sports career entered politics and was even the vice-president of the parliament at one time. It is on Canada’s sanctions list because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If they think that, like Finland or Sweden, secretly, taking advantage of the situation, they can join NATO and nothing will happen to them…”

The accession of the Republic of Moldova to NATO may lead to the destruction of this state and will be considered by Russia as a threat to its security, said another influential member of the State Duma in Moscow, Leonid Kalashnikov.

“If Moldova wants to destroy its own state, this is the best way (…). If they think that, like Finland or Sweden, secretly, quickly, taking advantage of the situation, they can join NATO and that nothing will happen to them in their own country, they should remember something else. The fact that Finland has two official languages ​​and respects its people. And they (Moldova) have Gagauzia (…) and Transnistria, which has a Russian-speaking population and which expressed its will long ago, in the early 1990s,” Leonid Kalashnikov told the same Vedomosti newspaper.

Leonid Kalashnikov is a communist deputy, president of the State Duma Commission on CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States, which unites several former Soviet republics – no), Eurasian integration and diaspora relations. He is included in the list of Russian politicians who were sanctioned by the international community after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kalashnikov emphasized that Russia’s attitude to the possible accession of the Republic of Moldova to NATO will be negative, as it represents a “threat to the security” of the Russian Federation.

Russia’s warning: the Republic of Moldova should not repeat the “suicidal policy” of Ukraine

In an interview with Politico, President Maia Sandu said last week that after the invasion of Ukraine, there is a serious debate in the Republic of Moldova about the country’s ability to defend itself and about the possibility of joining a “larger alliance” without being nominated to NATO as such. “And if at some point we as a nation come to the conclusion that we should change neutrality (the Constitution does not), it will be done through a democratic process,” President Maia Sandu said.

• Read also: Can the Republic of Moldova aspire to join NATO? What are the risks and what does Maya Sandu say about the rejection of neutrality

And Senator Andriy Klimov, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Policy of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament, published a comment on his Telegram channel on Monday, in which he rhetorically asked whether Maya Sandu is ready to repeat the “suicidal policy” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Petro Poroshenko . “Ukraine’s catastrophic problems began after the pro-Western coup d’état (in 2014), which was followed by the rejection of constitutional neutrality, which existed before, and the official declaration by Kyiv of a course towards the anti-Russian NATO military bloc,” he recalled.

• Read also: Chisinau is again threatened by the Moscow regime with a “repetition of the Ukrainian scenario” / “Romania is the most backward NATO country”

Recently, the Republic of Moldova asked its Western allies to strengthen its air defense capabilities, and last year, in June, the Moldovan parliament adopted a law on the protection of information space, which banned the rebroadcast of Russian propaganda programs. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last week asked the Republic of Moldova to cancel the bans, which she considered discriminatory, Vedomosti recalls.

• Read also: Maya Sandu asks for anti-aircraft complexes for the Republic of Moldova: “We understand that Ukraine is a priority, but we hope to get it as well”

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