03/25/2022 14:09 (act. 03/25/2022 16:36)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described Western sanctions against Russia as a “total hybrid war” against Moscow. © APA / HANS PUNZ
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “total hybrid war” against Moscow in the face of Western sanctions.
The Russian leadership accused the Western states of Nazi methods in dealing with Russia. President Vladimir Putin compared the cancellation of Russian artists’ performances in the West on Friday to the Nazi book burnings. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already compared the statements of European politicians with those of Adolf Hitler. He spoke of a “total war” against Moscow.
“Today they have declared us a true hybrid war, a total war,” Lavrov said in a meeting with representatives of the diplomatic foundation on Friday, according to the state-owned TASS agency.
Lavrov: West declared Moscow “total hybrid war”
The actual use of the term by prominent EU politicians in the past few weeks is unknown. On March 1, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire spoke of a “total war” against Russia on the economic and financial level in connection with the sanctions imposed, but withdrew the wording the same day after the criticism. In 1943, the head of Nazi propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in his loud speech at Sportpalast, called for “total war”.
Sergey Lavrov: European politicians want to “destroy” Russia
Lavrov said that European politicians want to “destroy, break, annihilate, strangle” Russia. “When we see this unlawfulness of sanctions, it is of course clear that all the values that our Western colleagues have constantly proclaimed to us, namely freedom of speech, the market economy and the inviolability of private property, the presumption of innocence – are worthless.”
“Today you are trying to annihilate a thousand-year-old country – I’m talking about the increasing discrimination against everything about Russia,” Putin said in a TV interview with the artists. “The last time such a massive action of destroying unwanted literature was carried out by the Nazis in Germany almost 90 years ago. We still remember the pictures of burning books in public places “.
Sanctions against Russia for aggressive war with Ukraine
Due to the Russian war with Ukraine, the seven leading democratic economic powers (G7) and the EU agreed on new sanctions on Thursday, which are expected to make Russia’s gold transactions much more difficult. The United States has also imposed new sanctions on hundreds of members of the Russian parliament and other members of the Russian elite.
The US announced more gas supplies to Europe
The US also announced on Friday that it and its international partners will supply an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU this year. In the long term, this amount is expected to rise to 50 billion cubic meters per year. This could replace about one-third of the current gas imports from Russia.
The central role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II has long played an important role in Putin’s patriotic rhetoric. Over the past few weeks, he has repeatedly used terms from the Nazi era, for example denouncing the economic “Blitzkrieg” in the West or comparing the sanctions to “anti-Semitic pogroms.”