Russia’s foreign minister reacts to bloc’s foreign policy chief statement that the conflict in Ukraine “will be won on the battlefield”
FILE PHOTO. ©Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images
The EU made a “serious U-turn” by morphing into a military organization acting in the interests of Washington and NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday in an interview with Russian media. He cited a remark that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell made last Saturday.
The European official said the conflict in Ukraine “will be won on the battlefield” as he announced more European military aid to Kiev. Lavrov called the statement “outrageous.”
“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,” Lavrov told Rossiya 24 news channel.
The EU has made a noticeable U-turn in its attitude towards Russia because Western powers are furious at Moscow for defending its vital interests in Ukraine instead of accepting a subservient role in the Washington-dominated “rules-based order”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
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Western nations acting in pursuit of American interests were trying to turn Ukraine into “a foothold for final suppression of Russia,” Lavrov said. After Moscow used force to counter that threat, European nations made a rapid shift in their attitude towards Russia. Now it “reflects spite and fury” towards the country. The dramatic change is evidence that the conflict in Ukraine is not about Ukraine, Lavrov believes.
“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 said.
Neither is true, Lavrov argued. Ukraine is a hotbed of radical nationalism while Western powers easily break any norms when it fits 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 offered as 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.
Russia launched a large-scale offensive against Ukraine in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.
