Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke with the press yesterday in Baku, following talks with Azerbaijan’s top diplomat Jeyhun Bayramov, and warned that Europe was uniting behind a policy of war against Russia, much as occurred with Hitler during World War II. “When World War II broke out, Hitler united a significant number — if not most — of the European countries under his banner for a war against the Soviet Union. Today, the EU and NATO are acting in a similar way, building a modern coalition of the same kind for a fight and pretty much a war against Russia.” Lavrov repeated that Russia is not particularly concerned about whether or not Ukraine and Moldova join the EU, but the broader drive for war against Russia.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova struck a similar theme, denouncing on her Telegram account Western sanctions against Russia and those who were blaming Russia for food shortages in the West. “Using hunger as a weapon” is “Germany’s historical tradition,” she wrote pointedly. And former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also pointed to the blockade of the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) by the Nazis during World War II, which lasted for 900 days, causing massive hunger in the city, and claiming the lives of almost 700,000 people.
