There is a real danger of the outbreak of World War III, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on state television on Pervij Kanal’s First Channel on Monday night. His words were quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax. Lavrov stressed that “the danger is serious, real, not to be underestimated”. Comparing the current situation to the period of the Caribbean crisis, he explained that “there were few written rules at the time, (…) but the rules of conduct were quite clear: Moscow was aware of how Washington behaved, and Washington was clear about what Moscow was doing”.
He stressed that while the new START Treaty (Russia-US Nuclear Weapons Treaty) is still in force, “all other means of arms control and non-proliferation have been virtually destroyed.”
According to the Russian foreign minister, during the Caribbean Missile Crisis, “there was a channel of communication trusted by the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States”.
“There is no such channel right now and no one is trying to create one. Some of the timid experiments made at an early stage did not yield many results. These included the fact that although they had desperately tried to reach NATO during all these years, when, contrary to our promises, Ukraine had been filled with weapons, contrary to our promises, its pro-Russian nature was encouraged by Petro Poroshenko. the regime established under the President of Ukraine) and strengthening (under the current head of state, Volodomir Zelensky) “
– Lavrov said.
He also said he really didn’t want the current risks to be artificially inflated while they were already very significant.
Regarding what Moscow is willing to do to prevent the outbreak of World War III, the minister stressed: “Russia has been doing quite a lot for many years.”
He recalled that even under the US government led by President Donald Trump, Moscow and Washington had called at the highest level for reaffirming Mikhail Gorbachev’s and Ronald Reagan’s 1987 statement that a nuclear war could not be won and should never be blown up.
He added: “We have taken the initiative with the Trump team to reaffirm this very important statement – which is important for our nation but also for the world. Unfortunately, we have not been able to convince our colleagues of the need for such a move, but we agreed very quickly with the Biden government, and our presidents made such a statement at the Geneva summit last June,” said Joe Biden, referring to the US and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also recalled that a similar statement had been made at the highest level by five permanent members of the UN Security Council. “This is our position in principle, from which we start,” the head of Russian diplomacy said.
Lavrov also confirmed that Moscow considers Western weapons given to Ukraine to be a legitimate target. The fact that NATO members are sending such weapons to Ukraine also means that NATO is “essentially involved” in the war with Ukraine against Russia.
MTI
