Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has taken part in an ambassadorial round table on the situation in Ukraine, Russian media reported.
Lavrov named the reason for the confrontation of Western states with Russia. According to him, the West is fighting against Russia because it sees that Moscow is becoming independent. Discussing the military conflict in Ukraine, the Russian minister said that “the roots of the Ukrainian crisis go back to the period preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Speaking to ministers at a roundtable, Lavrov said:
They want us to know our place. But we know our place – and that is the problem of the West. Because our place, which rightfully belongs to the Russian Federation, is the place of one of the leading great powers of our time.
He also added that Russia was “on the edge of the struggle” for a fair and equitable world order, which would be based on the principle of sovereign equality of countries.
Lavrov said that the Warsaw Pact collapsed, but no one dissolved NATO, many consider it a mistake, and the reason for the non-dissolution of NATO was the ineradicable desire of the US to preserve the alliance as an instrument of control over Europe.
Continuing on the issue of NATO, the Russian minister said:
About NATO expansion – this is a mistake, to a certain extent a provocation, to a certain extent an irresponsible policy that undermines the commitment to build a single system of equal and indivisible security for all in Europe, regardless of whether you are a member of a military-political bloc or not.
Lavrov also called “stupid” and “shameful” statements that NATO is an exclusively defensive alliance. He pointed to the military bloc’s desire to increase its influence in the Indo-Pacific region and recalled that NATO had expanded five times in the years since the Cold War. He noted:
We have made a compromise – no new combat forces will be stationed on the territory of new NATO member states, but we have noticed that they are being stationed.
