MOSCOW, December 8. /TASS/. Russia insists that the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana over the status of the Essequibo region be resolved by peaceful means with a mutually acceptable solution, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"We insist that this is a matter of Venezuelan-Guyanese relations, which should be settled in the spirit of good neighborliness by means of peaceful mutually acceptable solutions complying with international law and bilateral agreements, as well as current national laws," she said.

Moscow calls on the sides "to refrain from any steps that can disbalance the situation and incur mutual damage," she stressed.

"We object to external pressure and interference in the affairs of sovereign states, moreover when they have sensitive issues in bilateral relations which require ‘prudence’ from third countries both at the public and private levels," the diplomat pointed out.

Tensions over Essequibo

Venezuela's National Assembly (parliament) on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill on the protection of Guyana-Essequibo within Venezuela on first reading, based on the results of a consultative referendum. The bill provides for the establishment of Venezuela’s 24th state of Guyana-Essequibo in the disputed territory. The US on Thursday announced the start of joint air exercises with Guyana's military amid the soaring tensions in the country's territorial dispute with Venezuela.

Venezuela and Guyana have been at odds over a 159,500-square-kilometer area that sits west of the Essequibo River for more than 100 years. The territory, known as Guyana Essequibo, makes up more than two-thirds of Guyana and is home to 283,000 of the country’s little more than 800,000 residents.

The dispute escalated in 2015, when oil fields containing at least 10 billion barrels were discovered in the area and Guyana granted a concession for the development of oil fields on the non-delimited shelf to ExxonMobil.

In April, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it has jurisdiction over the dispute in Guyana’s lawsuit concerning border demarcation with Venezuela on the basis of the Arbitral Award of October 3, 1899 (Guyana v Venezuela, Paris), which, under pressure from the United Kingdom, ceded control over 90% of the disputed territory to Guyana, a British colony at that time. However, Venezuela, which insists on its sovereignty over Essequibo, does not recognize the ICJ’s jurisdiction over the dispute and demands direct border demarcation talks with Guyana, as stipulated by the 1966 Geneva Agreement.