MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax) - Russia will respond in a tit-for-tat manner to countries that have expelled Russian diplomats and will observe parity while doing so, Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said.
"No doubt, Russia will respond in a tit-for-tat manner and will observe parity on the number of diplomats with countries that have made the decision, as it is accepted in diplomatic practice," Matviyenko told reporters on Wednesday.
Matviyenko believes this will not be good for mutually positive cooperation, both on a bilateral or a multilateral basis, but Russia was not the one that started this and it should not be the one bearing responsibility for it.
"There are people who fuel yet more escalations of tensions, and they don't understand that by doing that they create a serious threat to the world, the planet in terms of security and upsetting the world order in which the planet lives. If they do not understand their responsibility and what they are doing, time will show that it's absolutely unacceptable," Matviyenko said.
Matviyenko said interparlimanetary cooperation should not be wound up by any means.
"On the contrary, in years of wars, both 'hot' and 'cold' and in other difficult situations, parliamentarians are representatives of the peoples and they should be the ones to conduct dialogue, to conduct negotiations," Matviyenko said.
Russia will increase its activity in defending its position both on a bilateral and multilateral basis on the parliamentary level, she said.
Matviyenko said she believes the situation with the "Skripal case" is a well thought-out provocation against Russia.
"Behind all these actions is an attempt to put pressure on Russia, to influence Russia, to tame Russia, to make it compliant, to make Russia the way it was in the 1990s, when it said 'what would you like?' However, none of this will happen, of course," she said.
Matviyenko said the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the United States and some European countries is an unprecedented event.
"However, it is just a small part of states, which are now, unfortunately, dependent. Because even those who symbolically reacted and made a decision to expel one or two diplomats are saying, please understand us, we are under a lot of pressure, they are demanding this, we cannot help but do it," she said.