Russia’s top diplomat warned Saturday against “trying to fight for victory with a nuclear force” and delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly full of condemnations of what Russia sees as Western attempts at global domination and machinations in Ukraine – and even within the United States Nations themselves.
Three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin was deployed a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrineForeign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to strategically “defeat” Moscow, and “prepare Europe to also plunge into this suicidal escapade.”
“I’m not going to talk about the futility and danger of the very idea of fighting for victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.
Putin’s recent announcement – which appeared to significantly lower the threshold for the possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal – was seen as a message to the US and other Western countries as Ukraine seeks permission to attack Russia with force. weapons for longer distances.
“Whether or not they will allow Ukraine to acquire long-range weapons, then we will see what their understanding was of what they heard,” Lavrov said at a news conference after his speech on Saturday.
The Biden administration announced this week a another $2.7 billion in military aid for Ukraine, but it does not include the kind of long-range weapons that President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking, nor a green light to use such weapons to strike deep inside Russia.
At the wide-ranging news conference, Lavrov complained that the “arrogance and aggressiveness of Western politicians” toward Russia was hampering global governance, from the U.N. Security Council to the newly adopted government. Pact for the futurethat Russia tried in vain to weaken.
He was critical of NATO’s geopolitical and military expansion, saying: “NATO is now trying to take root in the South Caucasus, in Central Asia, creating a direct threat to the security of our country.”
NATO has partnerships with the three South Caucasus countries – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – and all Central Asian countries except Afghanistan. But no one is a NATO member. “And now the same thing is happening in the Asia-Pacific region, where NATO infrastructure is creeping in to contain or deter China and Russia,” he told the meeting.
Lavrov accused the United States of wanting to “maintain its hegemony and rule everything.” He pointed to NATO’s deepening relations with four partners – New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Japan – and the so-called Quad, which groups the US, India, Australia and Japan.
On nuclear issues, when Russia suspended the New START nuclear treaty with the United States in February 2023, it said Moscow would stick to its limits — a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. Lavrov told reporters that Russia will stick to the levels until the treaty expires in 2026.
The specter of nuclear threats and confrontations has hung over the war in Ukraine since its inception. Shortly before the invasion, Putin reminded the world that his country “ one of the most powerful nuclear states”, and he deployed his nuclear forces on edge shortly afterwards. His nuclear rhetoric has waxed and waned at various points since then.
On Wednesday, Putin said that if Russia is attacked by a country backed by a nuclear-armed nation, it will consider it a joint attack. He did not specify whether that would trigger a nuclear response, but he emphasized that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that posed a “critical threat to our sovereignty.”
The United States and the European Union called his statements “irresponsible.” There was no immediate response to Lavrov’s speech on Saturday from the US, where a junior diplomat took notes in the conference chair as he spoke.
More than two and a half years after the fighting, Russia is making slow but continued progress in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has repeatedly struck Russian territory with missiles and drones, embarrassing Moscow with a surprise invasion of his troops which made significant gains in a border region last month.
Zelenskyy has pushed what he calls a peace formula to end the war. Provisions include expelling all Russian troops from Ukraine, ensuring accountability for war crimes, releasing prisoners of war and deportees, and more.
Meanwhile, so have Brazil and China launch a peace plan that means holding a peace conference with both Ukraine and Russia and not expanding the battlefield or otherwise escalating the fighting. Chinese and Brazilian diplomats promoted the plan at the meeting, attracting a dozen other countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, to join a group of “friends for peace” in Ukraine.
Lavrov said at his press conference that Russia was ready to provide assistance and advice to the group, adding that “it is important that their proposals are backed by reality and not just taken from some abstract conversations.”
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See more of AP’s coverage of the UN General Assembly at https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations