Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that EU has changed its stance toward Russia because of western countries and is now acting as the military arm of NATO.
In an interview with Russian media on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the EU has made a “serious U-turn” by turning into a military organisation functioning in the interests of Washington and NATO. He referred to a remark made by EU foreign policy leader Josep Borrell on Saturday.
As he promised fresh military aid to Kiev, the Spanish-born politician stated that the crisis in Ukraine “will be won on the battlefield.” The statement was deemed “outrageous” by Lavrov.
Lavrov told the news channel Rossiya 24, “When a diplomatic chief … says a certain conflict can only be resolved through military action… Well, it must be something personal. He either misspoke or spoke without thinking, making a statement that nobody asked him to make. But it’s an outrageous remark.”
According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the EU has done a notable U-turn in its stance toward Russia because Western countries are upset at Moscow for defending its essential interests in Ukraine rather than taking a submissive role in the Washington-dominated “rules-based order.”
Western countries acting in the interests of the United States were attempting to convert Ukraine into “a foothold for the final suppression of Russia,” according to Lavrov. Following Moscow’s deployment of force to neutralise that danger, European nations quickly changed their minds about Russia. It now “reflects spite and fury” toward the country. According to Lavrov, the abrupt shift proves that the crisis in Ukraine is not about Ukraine.
“Western propaganda shifted gear into depicting Russia as pure evil and [Ukraine] as pure good. The current Ukrainian regime is presumably a beacon of democracy, justice, freedom that is drawn to everything European, to the values that Europe claims it always adhered to,” the minister added.
Lavrov contended that neither of these statements are correct. Ukraine is a hotbed of radical nationalism, with Western powers breaking any norm when it suits them while telling others to comply.
“Kosovo can be recognized as independent without a referendum. Crimea cannot, despite holding a referendum observed by [many international monitors],” he said, citing an example of double standards.
“In Iraq, 10,000 kilometers away from the US, they imagined some threat to their national security. They bombed it, found no threat. And didn’t even say they were sorry,” he added. “But when right at our border they grow neo-Nazi ultra-radicals, create dozens of biolabs … working on bioweapons, as documents prove, we are told we are not allowed to react to those threats,” he added.
Following Ukraine’s failure to execute the provisions of the Minsk agreements made in 2014, and Russia’s subsequent recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, Russia started a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February. The Minsk Protocol, negotiated by the Germans and the French, was intended to grant the separatist areas special status within the Ukrainian state.
Since then, Moscow has insisted that Ukraine declare itself a neutral country that will never join the NATO military alliance led by the United States. Kiev believes the Russian invasion was unjustified and refutes assertions that it planned to seize the two separatist districts by force.