Washington (AFP) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said he hoped Ukraine’s allies took “seriously” Moscow’s recent use of a hypersonic missile in the conflict there, and warned that Russia was ready to use “any means” to defend itself. The United States and its allies “must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call strategic defeat of Russia,” Lavrov said in an interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson.
Two weeks ago, Russia fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an escalation of the almost three-year war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has since threatened to use the weapon on Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s territory, which took place after the United States authorized use of its ATACMS weapon system in such attacks.
“We are sending signals and we hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapons system called Oreshnik…was taken seriously,” Lavrov said. While he insisted that Russia does not want to escalate the situation and wants to “avoid any misunderstanding” with Washington and its partners, Lavrov warned that “we will send additional messages if they don’t draw necessary conclusions.” Putin said the Oreshnik missile flies at 10 times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by air defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the strike “the latest bout of Russian madness” and appealed for updated air-defense systems to meet the new threat.
– ‘This is a reality’ –
In the wide-ranging interview, Lavrov accused the United States of attempting to bully Russia and others on the international stage. On Ukraine, he said Moscow was “ready for any eventuality but we strongly prefer peaceful solution through negotiations on the basis of respecting legitimate security interests of Russia.” Describing what such a peace deal could look like, the top Russian diplomat said, among other demands, Kyiv would have to accept Russia’s claim of control over the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia. “They are now part of the Russian Federation according to the constitution and this is a reality,” he said.
He accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of escalating the conflict in Ukraine “to leave a legacy to the Trump administration as bad as they can.” Lavrov described US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in January and has vowed to swiftly end the war without explaining how he would do so, as a “strong person.” “I think he’s a very strong person, a person who wants results, who doesn’t like procrastination on anything,” he said.
– ‘Collective punishment’ –
He described Israel’s punishing military offensive in Gaza as inflicting “collective punishment, which is against international humanitarian law,” on Palestinians. Lavrov said Moscow was “very much concerned” with a recent escalation of violence in Syria, where armed rebel groups have seized swathes of territory from the government of Bashar al-Assad, a Russian regional ally. He said he planned to hold talks on Friday with Turkish and Iranian officials on the situation in Syria.
Carlson, a former Fox News host, is a right-wing journalist who is a key ally of Trump, and earlier this year was the first US journalist to interview Putin since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The media provocateur has spent years depicting the United States as a nation in decline, under assault by Democrats, so-called “woke” protesters and communism. He has increasingly promoted right-wing conspiracy theories since leaving Fox.
© 2024 AFP
