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.