The Claire Byrne Show<\/a>, Russian Ambassador Yury Anatoliyevich Filatov was asked if it was still Russia\u2019s position that Irish authorities who boarded such vessels would face serious consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cThat’s a certain fact,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat you might be assured that we would view such an attempt as an act of international piracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause nothing in the international law provides for such a possibility for the Irish forces to do essentially illegal action.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the Ambassador was summoned for a meeting with Foreign Minister Helen McEntee for a formal meeting, after German authorities concluded Moscow had sent a drone carrying explosives to Leipzig\/Halle Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The explosives were discovered close to Ukrainian cargo planes but had failed to explode.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Filatov described the meeting as \u201cnormal diplomatic practice\u201d and that it had been conducted without \u201ctheatrics\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that Russia \u201crejects\u201d any connection to the incident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI might add to that, that the Germans specifically, investigations have somewhat very low credibility, not only with us, but generally speaking in Europe,\u201d he insisted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also ruled out taking part in an international investigation on the grounds that they do not have \u201cany whatsoever connection to this incident\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite his frequent clashes with the Government since arriving in Ireland, Mr Filatov said he still believes that \u201cIreland is a friend of ours\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve had quite a good story of relationship with the Irish people,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI make distinction between Irish people and the Irish Government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, the Irish Government cannot be treated as a friendly one – that’s a clear case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have many friends in Ireland and I’m sure that there is plenty of goodwill on both sides, but the problem is with the decidedly anti-Russian politics of the government – that’s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Main image: The Russian Ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov. Picture by: Alamy.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Russian ambassador has warned Ireland it will face serious consequences if the Naval Service boards a Russian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-614458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}