In an interview April 29 with Al Arabiya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the point that while Russia does not see itself at war with NATO, NATO has a different view. “Unfortunately, NATO, it seems, considers itself to be at war with Russia,” he said. “NATO and European Union leaders, many of them, in England, in the United States, Poland, France, Germany and of course European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell, they bluntly, publicly and consistently say, ‘Putin must fail, Russia must be defeated.’ When you use this terminology, I believe you think that you are at war with the person who you want to be defeated.” (https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/04/29/Russia-s-Lavrov-Invasion-of-Ukraine-aimed-to-protect-Donetsk-Luhansk-republics)
Lavrov also reported that Russia’s diplomatic efforts to avoid conflict were repeatedly dismissed. “During all these years we have been initiating draft treaties, draft agreements with NATO, with countries of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and lately in December last year we proposed another initiative to the United States and to NATO to conclude treaties with both of them on security guarantees to all countries in the Euro-Atlantic space without joining any military alliance,” the foreign minister said. “Every time we initiated these steps, they were basically rejected with more or less polite behavior. In 2009, we proposed the European Security Treaty which NATO refused to consider and the treaty actually was about codifying something to which all OSCE countries subscribed at the top level.”
