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Top official demands Moscow 'get tough' on Romania, Moldova after disruption of visit

"The sharp tonality of my utterances reflects my emotions over the inconveniences over what happened to the passengers on our flight," Rogozin wrote in Facebook

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday the actions of the Romanian civil aviation authorities and the Moldovan government, which resulted in the disruption of his visit to Moldova, called for retaliatory measures.

"The sharp tonality of my utterances reflects my emotions over the inconveniences over what happened to the passengers on our flight," Rogozin wrote in Facebook. "Most of them were returning home. I always traveled to Moldova by regular flights of Russian airlines. The shameful stunt of the Romanians and the Moldovan government requires careful analysis and precisely calculated stinging countermeasures."

As reported earlier, Dmitry Rogozin’s visit to Moldova was disrupted on Friday because of Romanian air navigation service refusal to let a regular Moscow-Chisinau flight of S7 airline through the Romanian airspace due to the presence of a ‘person under sanctions’ aboard.

Rogozin is one of the Russian officials, whom the EU blacklisted after Crimea’s reunification with Russia and the unfolding of the armed civil conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

On flights between Moscow and Chisinau, Russian airlines use a long bypass route crossing the territories of Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania after Ukraine closed its airspace for them.

The S7 jet had to make a landing in the Belarusian capital Minsk, where from he left for Moscow by an Aeroflot flight.

Rogozin said in connection with the incident that Western countries "will never reconcile themselves" to Russia’s aspirations to being a free and strong country. "They were quite content with the tipsy Russia of the 1990’s but they will never reconcile themselves with our will to be free and strong."

"And being the way we want to be, that is, free and strong would be the best response to all these sanctions and dirty tricks," Rogozin indicated. "And we’ll decide in the regular course of business how to knock the hell out of those vile creatures."

He was heading for Chisinau at a personal invitation from President Igor Dodon, whom he planned to hold talks with.

A spokesman for the Romanian Foreign Ministry confirmed to TASS the jet, aboard which Rogozin was traveling to Chisinau, had been denied entry to the Romanian airspace.