Postscript, 7 August: Today’s edition of the quasi-governmental Rossiyskaya Gazeta (banned in the EU as a disseminator of fake news) carries an article headlined: “Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that the interpretation of Ryabkov’s words regarding provocations during the Navy Parade was incorrect.”
According to RG, in an interview with the state television station Rossiya 1 deputy minister Ryabkov had merely declined to answer a direct question about preparations for an attempted assassination and had said only that ‘there is a certain connection with this kind of event.’
I consider this finessing of the language to be no more than a test of wills between the hard line Ryabkov and his, shall we say, ‘gently, gently’ boss Sergey Lavrov. Surely only the risk of some devastating attack on Russia could have prompted Belousov to lift the telephone from its cradle and phone Austin.