Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was surprised by the scale of sanctions imposed by the Ukrainian war. This is the first time that Kremlin officials have admitted that they were not prepared for the Western response.
“When they froze the central bank's reserves, no one who predicted the sanctions that the West was going to approve could have imagined that. It's just a robbery,” Lavrov told the students of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Russia's leading foreign affairs university.
The ruble fell to record lows after Western countries froze $300 billion of Russia's foreign exchange reserves, preventing the central bank from deploying its arsenal of support.
Russia has attempted to combat its decline by introducing strict currency controls and has promised an “asymmetric” response that could include key import restrictions to “non-friendly” countries that have passed sanctions.
On the other hand, Lavrov warned that the deployment of NATO pacification forces in Ukraine would provoke military clashes between troops from Russia and the Atlantic Alliance.
“That will entail direct clashes between Russian and NATO forces, something that is not that we all want to avoid, but that we declare that they should not take place on principle,” he said during the university conference.
Lavrov considered the peacemaking proposal of Poland, one of Kiev's main allies and the destination of millions of refugees from the neighboring country, a provocation, and which he also accused of harboring territorial ambitions in Ukraine.
In addition to mentioning NATO's alleged plans to send to Ukraine a battalion composed of the three Baltic republics, he recalled that he had also opposed the deployment of an international force in the Donbas in due course.
He also denounced statements about the need to deploy Stinger anti-aircraft missiles in Ukraine, which, he warned, would pose “a colossal threat”.
Lavrov, in turn, accused the United States of being interested in extending “as long as possible” the current Russian “allied military operation” in Ukraine.
“They hope to continue supplying arms to Ukraine. You see that they want to keep us as much as possible in a state of combat,” he said.
He lashed out at Kiev for continually changing its position during the negotiations, during which, he suggested, the Ukrainian delegation goes hand in hand with the United States.
It framed within this strategy the latest interventions by the President of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelensky, before the parliaments of several Western countries.
“The delay (of the negotiations) is aimed at dramatizing the situation, allowing Zelensky in his khaki shirt to intervene before the parliaments of the world and after the speech with tears in his eyes to demand NATO interference again,” he said.
Lavrov assured that Moscow is not opposed to mediation by Western countries, but stressed that there are “absolutely red lines” that cannot be crossed.
As for the attempts to isolate his country and the pressures from the U.S. The US government for all world powers to join Western sanctions, replied: “We have many friends.”
(With information from EFE)
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