Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov blasted Washington’s reliance on terrorism as a weapon against Russia, in comments made on June 11 in response to the U.S. decision to lift the ban on the Azov Brigade receiving U.S. military support. “The horror is that the United States authorities, through their Russophobic policy, only condone such (terrorist) tendencies,” he said in his English-language message. Antonov reported that native Ukrainians and Russians sympathetic to the Kiev regime are being prepared—including by pumping them with “poisonous propaganda"—in California and other states for the battlefield in Ukraine and possibly other “antics.”
“The current situation, including the possible resumption of the ‘pumping’ of weapons into the neo-Nazis from Azov, cannot but remind us of the deplorable experience of the United States in the Middle East. The U.S. special services and military have repeatedly encouraged—for the sake of fighting a ‘common enemy’—the emergence of armed groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result has been nightmarish phenomena like ISIS. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Millions of refugees, including in Europe. The prolongation of bloody conflicts for decades.
“Russia’s position on the need to combat terrorism is clear and consistent. We are in favor of multilateral co-operation to eradicate this cancer. Russia is against politicized attempts to divide criminals into ‘good and bad.’ Bastards without a homeland and without conscience should be punished and isolated, not used for opportunistic purposes,” Ambassador Antonov concluded.
