ST. PETERSBURG, May 23./ITAR-TASS/. Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house, said on Friday she never conceded that Russian armed forces could be used in Ukraine’s southeastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“I don’t even look at this scenario and don’t concede it, since from the very beginning Russia’s position has been clear and transparent - actual ways out of this political crisis can be found only in a nationwide dialogue in Ukraine,” she told journalists on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russia, in her words, had been calling for such dialogue.

She explained why back at the very beginning of the Ukrainian crisis the Federation Council had allowed the Russian president to use the army in Ukraine. It had been necessary to grant the president the entire toolkit for taking emergency decisions in case the situation developed under the worst scenario, she said. The upper house “gave its consent to cool down hotheads so that they understood that it is inadmissible to infringe upon people’s rights, to put in jeopardy people’s security,” she stressed. According to Matviyenko, this consent was a kind of warning for those who was about to launch a blood-shedding scenario in Ukraine.