Kremlin spokesman yesterday Dmitry Peskov joined Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, and RIAC President Dmitry Trenin in issuing significant Russian policy statements this week—as if on a mission to make sure the world is aware of Russia’s thinking at this critical strategic juncture. Peskov spoke to the Swiss daily Weltwoche on July 7, with excerpts reported by Sputnik.
“Russia is too big and too responsible a country to be an initiator of a third world war,” Peskov said. “The United States knows the possible consequences of that war as well, plus we have relatively good dialogue. We’re not good enough at bilateral relations because they’re stuck. They’re running on zero-level bilateral relations, but despite that, we are clever enough to talk to each other, and we’re too big and too powerful in terms of mutual deterrence to be at war.”
Peskov addressed the Europe situation: “Europe, all of a sudden, understood that they are not any more guaranteed from the point of view of security by the United States, and that they have to add a military, a military capacity to the EU economic bloc. And now we are witnessing a transformation of EU to an economic and military block. This is a brand new process on European soil, and of course we are monitoring it very closely.”
