Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov criticized the United States and its allies this Thursday when speaking about Ukraine. According to him, the West, led by the US, is trying to maintain its global domination and military supremacy, which is why it does not want to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
“We do not see the slightest interest on the part of the United States or NATO in regulating the Ukrainian conflict and in listening to Russian concerns,” Lavrov said during a press conference to take stock of Russian diplomacy in 2023.
In this context, he added, it is impossible for Moscow and Washington to resume contacts on nuclear arms control. The American side had proposed separating both issues to return to talking about “strategic stability”, something on which the Russian side does not agree.
Russia and the United States have the largest nuclear arsenals in the world and currently tension between them is at the highest point since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. In this context, the absence of dialogue is relevant because the Start III agreement ( or New Start), which limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads of the two, expires in February 2026, and Russia also suspended its participation in February 2023. It is the only nuclear weapons agreement still in force between the two powers.
Moscow also believes that the increasingly frequent Ukrainian attacks and increasingly inside Russian territory are driven by its Western allies. The West does not want any constructive solution when it pushes Ukraine to attack the Crimean peninsula and other Russian territories, Lavrov assured.
In the last week of 2023 and the first week of 2024, the exchange of air strikes between Russia and Ukraine was very intense. One of the Ukrainian offensives was the deadliest against Russian territory of this war. It targeted the city of Belgorod and killed 25 civilians on December 30, a day after a Russian offensive against several Ukrainian cities killed 55.
“The use of long-range means to attack Crimea, in general to make life there, and inside the territory of the Russian Federation, unsuitable, as well as the transfer of relevant weapons, indicates that the West does not want any constructive solution that has take into account Russia’s legitimate concerns,” he said.
The West, he accused, “is pointing towards an escalation of the Ukrainian crisis”, which in his opinion leads to creating “strategic risks and additional dangers.”
Russia’s position is also the opposite of that of the US on the conflict between Israel and Hamas and the current tensions in the Middle East. Moscow’s position was made clear by Lavrov, who described the White House’s justifications for bombing Houthi positions in Yemen as “pathetic.”
The Russian Foreign Minister compared the American attack to what happened in Libya in 2011, referring to the military intervention that, under the protection of the UN, took place shortly after the start of the civil war in the North African country.
“Washington’s justifications seem, I would say, very pathetic,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov appealed to the United States to cease what he called “aggression” against that country in the south of the Arabian Peninsula next to the Red Sea. “The most important thing now is to stop the aggression against Yemen, because the more the Americans and British bomb, the less the Houthis will want to parley,” Lavrov said.
