MOSCOW. April 16 (Interfax) - The Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, hopes that a repeat of the Caribbean crisis will be avoided.
The current souring of Russia's relationship with the United States could lead to a scenario similar to the events in 1962, he said.
"I hope this is not so. I would not like a repeat of the Caribbean crisis. The Caribbean crisis was prevented literally at the last moment," Nebenzya said in an interview with the Weekly News program on Rossiya-1 (VGTRK) television channel.
"An interesting thing I once read in the New York Times, there were reminiscences of the Caribbean crisis and of how President Kennedy was making the decision. He summoned his generals and asked them: can we destroy the Soviet Union with one massive nuclear strike? They said: yes. He asked: what is the price of the question. They said: 600,000 American lives. To which President Kennedy said: no, I can't do that. And that was the beginning of the resolution of the Caribbean crisis," Nebenzya said.
Hopefully, the White House is not considering the issue "in this context" yet "because, of course, the world still has not run out of sensible people, including in the U.S. military system," Nebenzya said.
As for the Skripals case, "it is a film episode called 'Let's corner Russia'," he said.
"I said that the Salisbury provocation was no doubt an attempt to discredit, delegitimize Russia. We can see it, this is happening right before our eyes. Doubts have been raised about our role not only in the field of Syrian chemical settlement, people are questioning whether Russia has the right to vote on international stage at all, given its protection of the killer [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad and its use of a chemical weapon in the country that is a permanent member of the [UN] Security Council," Nebenzya said.
"If they [the West] want to turn us into a rogue state, these attempts are bound to fail," he said.
"First of all, they are a limited group of nations pursuing their own interests in this vaudeville they are acting out now. But the world is bigger than these two-three-four-five-six countries which are directly interested. In reality, far fewer countries are interested in this directly," Nebenzya said.