BELGRADE, May 30. /TASS/. The situation in northern Kosovo approached the critical line, with each round of escalation bringing the situation closer to a regional conflict, Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko said during a press briefing at the embassy Tuesday.

"Such outbreaks keep happening, there were several in the last year already; meanwhile, the intensity of the standoff and its danger, volatility, naturally, increases every time, it escalates," the Russian diplomat underscored. "The growing escalation and the new round of tension that took place just recently, the persistent tension, which, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it quite precisely, threatens an explosion of regional scale, if not European one."

The Russian envoy pointed out in particular that the escalation of the conflict indicates an escalation of the situation in Norther Kosovo all the way down to the critical line."

Earlier, Lavrov called the situation in Kosovo and Metohija concerning and noted that "a major explosion is brewing in the middle of Europe." The Foreign Minister also pointed out that, in 1999, NATO "carried out an aggression against Yugoslavia" in this Serbian region "in violation of all conceivable principles of the Helsinki Final Act" and other OSCE documents.