MOSCOW. July 25 (Interfax) - North Korea's latest missile launches should be seen as a direct response to the United States' and South Korea's plans to conduct joint military exercises in August, Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee head Leonid Slutsky said.
"The situation surrounding the DPRK cannot be viewed as one that has been normalized. The missile launches that have been carried out are Pyongyang's direct response to the U.S. and South Korean military exercises slated for August," Slutsky told journalists on Thursday.
Neither Washington nor Seoul have dropped their plans despite the ongoing negotiating process on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, he said.
"This military muscle-flexing game only increases the tension in the region," Slutsky said.
All sides should remain calm and not provoke the possible exacerbation of the situation amid the nascent positive trends in the Korean settlement process. Russia plans to highlight this via all possible channels of inter-parliamentary interaction, Slutsky said.
The South Korean military command said earlier that North Korea had launched two unidentified projectiles from the eastern coast.