The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Uzbekistan has summoned Russia’s ambassador to Tashkent over a Russian politician’s call for Moscow to annex this Central Asian country, a former Soviet republic, Reuters reports.

Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, who co-chairs the Just Russia For Truth party, said this week that he believes Russia should annex Uzbekistan and other countries with large numbers of citizens working in Russia.

Oleg Malginov, Uzbekistan’s foreign minister, told Reuters on Thursday that his country was “deeply concerned” by the “provocative” comments.

However, the ministry headed by him clarified on Friday that his statements do not mean that Uzbekistan considers Prilepin’s comments to reflect the Kremlin’s official position.

Millions of seasonal workers from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia move to work in Russia each year, occasionally causing economic and ethnic tensions between Moscow and the region’s capitals.

The illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of war in Ukraine last year have caused unrest in some former Soviet republics, which have unpleasant memories of Moscow’s imperialist antics.

Uzbekistan declared its independence on August 31, 1991, after the Politburo of the Communist Party in Moscow failed to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power in a coup d’état. The Soviet Union was officially dissolved on December 26 of the same year.

Although Uzbekistan is not a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance led by Russia, it is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an organization of former Soviet republics close to Moscow.