Matlock's invitation to ballerina Maya Plisetskaya to attend a reception at Spaso House provided a way for Matlock to judge Gorbachev's intentions, as earlier Soviet leaders would have considered it a provocation.
In mid-March, the Republic provided a pretext for an attack on itself by appointing her own candidate to the vacant bishopric of Vicenza (an act in keeping with prevailing custom, though Julius considered it a personal provocation); the Pope called for all Christian nations to join him in an expedition to subdue Venice.
Washington and European capitals are preparing new sanctions that would sever Iran from the international banking system, a move that would cripple its economy and that Tehran has said it would consider a provocation to war.
"It is absolutely unacceptable and we consider this a provocation," Russian ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Yakovenko told Sky News on Wednesday.
It would be considered a provocation of the employees".
The first thing Crowe and his ranch hands should do, experts agree, is be careful about flaunting the color red, which some here consider blasphemous, even a provocation.
"I consider this law a provocation intended to divide society over a question that could have been used to teach people understanding," Aleksandr Korbinsky, an opposition member of St . Petersburgs Parliament who voted against the measure, said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
"If we had stopped them right from the beginning it might have been considered a provocation and things might have gotten out of hand".
Last week, Russian fighter jets passed over the warship in a move the Pentagon considered a provocation, but it is unclear what the dolphins would have done to confront Russian airpower.
She considers it pointless, counterproductive even, to answer the Russian's provocations with passive reserve.
