With regard to Western sanctions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of a “hybrid war” aimed at 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.
“This term, which was used in Nazi Germany, is now used by European politicians when they talk about what they want to do with the Russian Federation.” The actual use of the term by prominent EU politicians in the past few weeks is unknown. In 1943, the head of Nazi propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in his loud speech at Sportpalast, called for “total war”.
Lavrov said that European politicians want to “destroy, break, annihilate, strangle” Russia. “When we see this unlawfulness of sanctions, it is obviously 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.”
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 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.