US, Nato ‘participants in the war’

RUSSIAN Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the US and Nato of playing a direct and dangerous role in the Ukraine war and said Washington had turned Kyiv into an existential threat for Moscow which it could not ignore.

Russia’s top diplomat, speaking yesterday during his annual news conference in Moscow, also accused the US and Nato of trying to ratchet up tensions in the South China Sea and of trying to subvert any regional bodies designed to promote dialogue, such as the OSCE in Europe and ASEAN in Asia.

And he defended a Russian campaign that has used air, drone and missile strikes to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure, attacks that Kyiv and the West have called war crimes.

“We disable energy facilities (in Ukraine) that allow you (the West) to pump lethal weapons into Ukraine to kill Russians,” Lavrov said.

“So don’t say that the US and Nato are not participants in this war – you are directly participating. Including not only with the supply of weapons, but also with the training of personnel – you train the (Ukrainian) military on your territory.”

Lavrov’s stance, revisiting familiar Russian talking points, is rejected by Western powers who say they are arming and training Kyiv to help it recapture its own land and that Ukraine does not have territorial designs on Russian land.

Russia, which dominated Ukraine before the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, calls its intervention in its neighbour “a special military operation” to safeguard Moscow’s security.

Lavrov accused the West of trying to use the conflict to destroy Russia. “Talk of the West being interested in some kind of peaceful settlement does not impress us,” he said.

“The West has publicly announced that it does not just want Russia to be defeated on the battlefield. It has said that Russia should be destroyed as a player altogether.”

His comments appeared to be a reference to the fact that some Western politicians have said they want to ensure Russia cannot pose a threat to neighbouring countries in future, and to remarks by some Ukrainian politicians who have speculated how long Russia might hold together as one country.

Lavrov made clear that Russia was open to talks, both with Ukraine and the US. Russia had never shied away from possible contacts with US President Joe Biden and had shown willingness by receiving the German and French leaders to discuss Ukraine.

Ukraine has said it will only be ready to hold talks once Russia had withdrawn from its territory, and that Russia would only use talks to buy time and rebuild its armed forces. Lavrov said this was “absurd” and complained about the “naive” American expectation that Russia would continue talks on nuclear stability when the West was using Ukraine to destroy Russia.