Lavrov Warns Europe Against War with Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow has no intention of attacking European countries, but warned that any attack on Russia would trigger what he described as a very different and brief conflict.

Moscow would also regard the deployment of Western military forces in Ukraine as direct involvement in the war rather than hybrid warfare. The foreign minister expressed hope that the warning had been heard in European capitals and accused Western countries of being unreliable.

He accused Europe of seeking to preserve the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he described as a Nazi and a Russophobe, and blamed the war in Ukraine on what he characterized as the West’s expansionist policies.

Any peace settlement, he argued, must address the objectives Russia set at the beginning of what it calls its “special military operation”, its term for the invasion of Ukraine. These include addressing what Moscow calls the “root causes” of the conflict and protecting the rights of Russian-speaking people, including their ability to use the Russian language and practice the Orthodox faith.

Achieving those objectives would, in Moscow’s view, improve security across Eurasia and contribute to a world order based on a balance of interests rather than the dominance of a single power.

Turning to negotiations, Lavrov maintained that Moscow had never refused talks over Ukraine and remained open to bilateral or trilateral formats. Russia was awaiting proposals and would accept any meeting place agreed by the participants, although he acknowledged that Moscow had few illusions about the prospects for an agreement.

(TASS, bak)