Lavrov states that “Unfortunately, Europeans have chosen a path reminiscent of the beginning of the Second World War”
President Vladimir Putin first expressed his annoyance at NATO’s expansion at an international forum during the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Putin has always maintained that when the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, agreed to reunify Germany, the West promised that the Alliance would not approach the USSR’s borders, a guarantee that should have been given only verbally, as no document had been signed.
Today they say in Moscow that they are convinced that the origin of all evil for the global security system is NATO and, secondly, especially the United States and the European Union. In fact, the Russian authorities often repeat that the current war in Ukraine is actually a campaign against the Atlantic Alliance.
This Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated at a press conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, that “the countries of the European Union and NATO are preparing for a war against Russia”. Lavrov argued that “Unfortunately, Europeans have chosen a path reminiscent of the beginning of World War II, when Hitler gathered a significant part, if not most, of the countries of Europe under his flag to fight against the Soviet Union. ”
“Now, in the same way, the European Union, together with NATO, is putting together the same but more modern coalition to fight and, in general, wage war against the Russian Federation. We will analyze all this carefully,” added the head of to Russian diplomacy, he also pointed out that “we are well aware that the EU has clearly evolved in recent years towards establishing aggressive ideological pillars, fundamentally russophobic”.
In June last year, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the attack by Hitler troops on the USSR, the German weekly ‘Die Zeit’ published an article by Vladimir Putin in which he described NATO expansion as a “remnant of the Cold War”. mentioned. “Since 1999, there have been five more waves of enlargement with the integration of 14 new countries, including the republics of the former Soviet Union,” stressed the Russian president, referring to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In his opinion, such a course of action buried “the hopes of a continent without dividing lines.”
Moscow’s final break with the Alliance occurred in October last year due to the expulsion of eight Russian diplomats accredited in Brussels before the organization was accused of “hostile activity”. The Russian embassy to NATO was closed and the Allied representation in Moscow also disappeared. Putin announced that “NATO has broken all dialogue mechanisms.”
Even then, less than four months after the war in Ukraine started, Moscow again denounced the approach of the Alliance’s infrastructure to Russia’s borders and the conduct of maneuvers in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea. The Russian president also deplored arms supplies to Ukraine and Kiev’s refusal to abide by the Minsk accords, a factor he believes has exacerbated the crisis in Donbass.
The truth is that at that time, Russia had its troops along the Ukrainian border ready for the invasion it was to launch on February 24. In the month of December, intense diplomatic activity to avoid war began with multiple meetings, especially between Lavrov and his American counterpart, Antony Blinken.
The Kremlin demanded “security guarantees,” including a withdrawal from NATO to the positions it held in 1997, a decision as unrealistic as removing all states that had joined since then from the organization. And also rules out that Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia or any other ex-Soviet republic could ever be part of the Atlantic apparatus. Moscow also wanted to recognize Crimea as Russian territory.
The negotiations have failed. As Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky estimates, Putin has always tried to agree with the West on “a new world order, a division of zones of influence.” And Ukraine is clearly Russia’s backyard. The top Russian leader believes that the Maidan uprising in Kiev was instigated by the United States and the European Union, as well as that the annexation of Crimea and the separatist uprising in Lugansk and Donetsk were the consequences of such interference.
Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov warns that “NATO has become the greatest threat to the world in the last 30 years”. Pushkov said on Thursday that the Alliance is “not a defensive organization, as was evident in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, as well as in the attempts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.” Now, however, with the possible integration of Sweden and Finland, Russia will move even closer to NATO’s military apparatus and could seriously jeopardize its security by having as a neighbor a country with which it could wage a bloody and devastating war. conducts without Ukraine rather any act of aggression against it.
Source: La Verdad
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