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As the European powers have set out in a mission to civilise Africa, Russia has decided to pursue its vested interests in Tataria and the Far East by carrying the torch of civilisation to the region. It is our aim to justly rule and raise this land for the benefit of its own people, too. Whilst the Japanese communiqué is eager to point out Russian misdeeds in the region, it is conveniently silent about our deeds to reprimand those officers.

We believe that in subduing brigands and 'Boxers' in the region and taking it under our care, and our support for the Gaselee expedition, it is very hard to see where exactly Russia has betrayed its friends in Europe and America. The tone of Japanese diplomacy is one in which it aims, arrogantly so, to present its own national interests as those of the world as a whole, which in the Russian opinion is a tone that does not bode well for future diplomatic relations between our countries. Unless Japan itself aims to take hostile action against the people of Tataria, it has nothing to fear from Russian deeds in the region.

Whilst it is of course harmful to our honour as a nation of our magnitude to officially respond to such an upstart move, and it should be natural to do so, we implore the world to ignore the Japanese boy crying wolf and allow Russia to act in the best interests of Tataria's people.

-Count V.N. Lamsdorf, His Majesty's Foreign Minister.