MOSCOW — Russia continued Wednesday to ratchet up pressure on the government in Kiev, warning that events in eastern Ukraine could prompt a military response and again accusing the United States of directing events there.
“If we are attacked, we would certainly respond,” Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said in an interview with the Kremlin’s satellite news network, Russia Today, or RT. The network’s website published a short excerpt from the interview, which was scheduled to be broadcast later Wednesday.
Mr. Lavrov also made one of the first high-profile statements comparing the events in Ukraine to the circumstances that led to the war in Georgia in 2008 and to the breaking away of two republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
“If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law,” Mr. Lavrov said.
An accord reached in Geneva last week, when all sides seemed to agree on the need to defuse the confrontation over cities seized by armed, pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, is continuing to crumble. Each side has demanded that the other make the first move, and the agreement did not include an enforcement measure.
On Tuesday, Ukraine had announced that it was resurrecting an effort to use its armed forces to retake buildings, although a previous attempt sputtered out without changing the balance of forces.
Mr. Lavrov again denied that Russian troops massed along the border had crossed into Ukraine, but he also said that any attacks on Russians in Ukraine would bring a response. “Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” he said.
Mr. Lavrov repeated his accusation that Washington was coordinating events in Ukraine, citing the visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to Kiev, the capital, earlier this week.
“There is no reason not to believe that the Americans are running the show,” Mr. Lavrov said. The announcement of the resumption of the military campaign came on the heels of Mr. Biden’s visit, the foreign minister said, just as the first call by leaders in Kiev for such a campaign came after a visit by John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.
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