Peace is better than war, but we had to act, says Russia
US Senate blocks law limiting trade with Russia
During a speech at Moscow’s State Institute of International Relations on Wednesday, the senior official warned that the Polish authorities had announced they would convene a NATO summit soon and that the alliance would need to send peacekeeping forces.
“I hope they understand what is at stake. It would be a direct clash between Russian armed forces and NATO troops, which everyone not only wanted to avoid, but which was claimed should never happen,” he said, according to the TASS news agency.
The Russian foreign minister did not rule out that after the offer to send peacekeepers to Ukraine, Warsaw plans to establish a headquarters in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on the border between the two countries and then to stay there.
“The second purpose of this provocation is that not only peacekeeping was discussed. The Baltic states said they could send some small battalions to defend Ukraine,” Lavrov said, urging NATO to “keep calm.”
Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki declared that Ukraine has the right to invite “anyone it wants” to its territory, including NATO peacekeepers, commenting that Russia “will not dare to attack the alliance”.
In another part of his speech, the head of Moscow diplomacy emphasized that European countries have shown that they are unreliable partners, so Russia is being strengthened.
He explained that the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other mechanisms will be priorities for strengthening exchanges.
“When Europe comes to its senses, we will not close the door,” but Moscow will examine possible proposals for cooperation “from qualitatively different positions,” he stressed.
Russia began a military operation in Ukraine on February 24 after authorities in the selfproclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics requested help to repel mounting aggression from Kyiv.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the aim of the operation is to protect the people of Donbass from the abuses and genocide in Kyiv over the past eight years, in addition to “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” Ukraine.
He also reiterated that Moscow cannot allow Kyiv to acquire and further militarize nuclear weapons, which poses a threat to the country’s security. He stressed that the continued eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Organization (NATO) was unacceptable to Russia.
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