LONDON, December 12. /TASS/. The Group of Seven has called on Russia to de-escalate the situation around Ukraine and warned about serious consequences in case of a hypothetical Russia’s aggression against the neighboring country.
"Russia should be in no doubt that further military aggression against Ukraine would have massive consequences and severe cost in response," the G7 foreign ministers said in a statement on Ukraine released on Sunday.
The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United States, France, and Japan finished their two-day summit in Britain’s Liverpool on Sunday.
They also called on Moscow to reduce tension at the Russian-Ukrainian border, "pursue diplomatic channels, and abide by its international commitments on transparency of military activities."
The G7 top diplomats reaffirmed their "unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the right of any sovereign state to determine its own future."
"We will intensify our cooperation on our common and comprehensive response," they said in the statement. "We reconfirm our support for the efforts of France and Germany in the Normandy Format to achieve full implementation of the Minsk Agreements in order to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine."
Recently, Western countries and Ukraine have been speaking about Russia’s possible aggression against Ukraine. Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov slammed such statements as hollow and groundless tension-fanning. He stressed that Russia is a threat to no one but did not rule out possible provocations to justify such statements and warned that attempts at using force to settle the crisis in southeastern Ukraine would have the most serious consequences. According to Peskov, Moscow is committed to the Normandy format and the Minsk agreements and spares no effort to help Kiev settle the conflict in Donbass.