Newsweek has published an interview with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov, in which he had the opportunity to fully present his government’s policy and the special military operation in Ukraine. Antonov warned of the danger of nuclear war, gave the background to the conflict as resulting from U.S. policy to attack Russia, and the fact that that policy is failing.
In the very beginning of the interview Antonov warned: “More and more countries are getting involved in the cycle of events in Eastern Europe” and “the negative consequences of the crisis of European security in various manifestations are rapidly spreading around the world.” Warning of the conflict leading to nuclear war, he said: “Driven by the desire to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, the local elites are raising the stakes in escalating tensions by pumping up the Kiev regime with weapons. Is it not clear that this is the road to a direct military confrontation between the major nuclear powers, fraught with unpredictable consequences?”
As for sanctions, Antonov said they have backfired: “The plans to strangle our country with sanctions do not work either. The thoughtless imposition of restrictions only aggravates the situation in the U.S. economy. Thus it turns out that in an anti-Russian fever, Washington is ready to shoot itself in the leg and dance simultaneously. It looks absurd.
“Moreover, the actions by the Americans will not affect the determination of the Russian Armed Forces to fulfill the tasks set during the special military operation to protect the population of Donbass, as well as the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine,” he emphasized.
Antonov said the roots of the current conflict do not lie in Ukraine, but “the decline of the American-centric world order. To be more precise the collapse of the U.S. attempts to sustain a hegemonic role and proclaim itself as a ‘guiding star’ for all countries.” He argued that “the American ruling class” had “made a series of grave miscalculations” in the aftermath of the Cold War that “boil down to one thing: ignoring the role of our country as a backbone factor of the world order.” And as Russia grew stronger “U.S. authorities decided to dispute this obvious fact and started to aggressively impose ‘democratic’ values on us, even though those ideals are often alien to Russians.” In their quest, U.S. leaders “began to interfere in Russia’s domestic policy and pose national security threats to us, coming closer and closer to our borders.” Antonov continued, “it’s time to get used to the idea of the impossibility of building a world order in which all countries must follow Washington’s instructions, and where Western values are above the law.” He argued for a new order based on “polycentrism,” with growing roles for countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and other parts of Asia, as well as a central role for the UN Security Council, whose permanent members unfortunately have become divided.
