In his wide-ranging interview with TV host Dmitry Kiselyov today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the West seeks to make Russia suffer “a lasting strategic defeat” in Ukraine. “What is it if not racism, Nazism, and an attempt to find a solution to `the Russian question?’” he asked. With their unending sanctions, he continued, Western nations hope to cripple Russia completely, to bring a “decade of regression,” as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen bluntly put it.
“We are in the center of a geopolitical battle. There is no doubt about it,” Lavrov said. Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are “heroes” whose “deeds are for the future of mankind, in which there will be no conditions for full US hegemony,” added Lavrov.
The Russian leader said that, naturally, everyone wants the Ukraine conflict to end. The key, however, is not the timing, but a “quality end-result that we can secure for our nations, for those people who want to remain part of Russian culture and who have for years been deprived of all things Russia by the Kiev junta with Western connivance. At this point, we are acting based on the principle proclaimed by our Western colleagues: victory should be won on the battlefield. This is their clear formula, and they were the ones who refused to negotiate.”
