Lavrov Agrees With Trends Journal: U.S. at War With Russia
Lavrov said the West is 'de facto fighting against us, using the hands and bodies of Ukrainians'
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Sergey Lavrov, the top Russian diplomat, said the U.S. and its NATO allies are in a direct war with Moscow—no matter how these countries try to officially frame it.
“You can call it anything you want, but they are fighting with us, they are straight-up fighting with us,” he told the UN in New York. “We call it a hybrid war, but that doesn’t change things.”
The foreign minister noted how the U.S. and its Western allies have pumped Ukraine with billions in advanced weapons, provided training, and intelligence for Kyiv before major strikes on Russian targets.
Lavrov said the West is “de facto fighting against us, using the hands and bodies of Ukrainians.”
He accused the U.S. of using Ukrainians as fodder.
“I think everybody present here who pays at least some attention to (…) the situation in Ukraine knows very well that Americans, Britons, and others are fighting, first of all, through providing more and more weapons,” he said, according to Euractiv.
The Associated Press noted that Ukraine’s seats in the assembly hall were empty “for at least part of Lavrov’s speech” and one American diplomat “wrote on a notepad in her country’s section” during his address.
The AP said Lavrov did not attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s UN speech earlier in the week because he had his “own affairs to attend to.”
“We know what he’s going to say. Why waste time?” Lavrov said. The report said Lavrov watched Zelensky’s remarks and said the Ukrainian leader “looked rather grim.”
He also dismissed Zelensky’s 10-point peace proposal as “not feasible.”
“It is not possible to implement this. It’s not realistic and everybody understands this but, at the same time, they say this is the only basis for negotiations,” he said.
Zelensky wants its pre-invasion territory returned, war crimes charges against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Moscow to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Lavrov said Russia respects Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
“Back in 1991, we recognized Ukraine’s sovereignty on the basis of the Declaration of Independence it adopted when it left the USSR. The declaration mentions many good things, including that they will respect the rights of national minorities, Russian and other languages, Russian is explicitly mentioned,” said Lavrov.
Lavrov mentioned NATO expansion and how it reached “unprecedented” levels since the end of the Cold War. He said Russia is willing to talk about a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, but will not agree to a ceasefire because Moscow “was deceived before.”
TRENDPOST: Fiona Hill, senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, and Angela Stent, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings, penned an article in Foreign Affairs that mentions a possible peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia in the early days of the war.
The two, who are deeply connected to the political establishment in Washington, cited “multiple former senior U.S. officials” who told them that it seemed Kyiv and Moscow “have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
Responsible Statecraft wrote about the “impact” of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Ukraine at about the time the peace deal was being floated.
Ukrainska Pravda, a pro-Western newspaper, reported that the peace talks came to a halt after Johnson’s visit. The article stated that “The Russian side…was actually ready for the Zelensky-Putin meeting.”
The report said Johnson arrived in Ukraine “almost without warning” and had two messages.
1: Putin is a war criminal and should be pressured, not negotiated with.
2: Even if Kyiv is ready to sign some agreements, the West has not crossed that bridge.
Relatedly: NEW - Ukraine designates the three largest Chinese oil and gas companies as "international sponsors of war" for helping Russia.
This is clearly the direction we're headed. WWIII has been here for some time.