UPDATE - Russia strongly condemns UK, US strikes on Yemen

UPDATES WITH COMMENTS BY KREMLIN SPOKESMAN, HEAD OF PARLIAMENT

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - Russia on Friday strongly condemned the overnight airstrikes by the US and UK on Yemen’s Houthis.

Russia's concerns, voiced during discussion earlier this week of a US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution against Houthi attacks on ships, that the document will be "misinterpreted" and used to justify "illegal actions" have materialized, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a press briefing in Moscow.

"Our fears have been confirmed that the US position in the UN Security Council on the Red Sea is only a pretext for further escalation of tension in the region. We strongly condemn the actions of the US and its allies," she stressed.

According to Zakharova, military escalation in the Red Sea region may negate the positive trends that have emerged recently towards resolution of the Yemen conflict, as well as provoke destabilization throughout the Middle East region.

"As we warned, to justify their aggression, the Anglo-Saxons are trying to use UN Security Council Resolution 2722, adopted the day before under the pretext of ensuring the safety of navigation in the Red Sea," she emphasized.

“Americans have been using such absolutely unscrupulous methods, contrary to international law, for a long time.”

In the same way, the West used "perverted interpretations of UN Security Council decisions" to unleash "criminal actions" in Iraq and Libya, she said.

Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the UK and US strikes as "illegitimate": "We condemn them (the strikes). From the point of view of international law, they are illegitimate. That's our position," he stressed.

Earlier in the day, Valentina Matviyenko, the head of the Russian upper chamber of parliament, the Federation Council, called attacks "an attempt to preserve vanishing hegemony."

"Without addressing the UN, without obtaining the consent of its own Congress, which is provided for by American law, another lawlessness has been committed, for which there is no justification," she underlined.

Earlier on Thursday, the office of the Russian envoy to the UN Security Council demanded an urgent meeting to discuss the UK and US strikes on Yemen carried out in response to Houthi attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.