Lavrov – EU and NATO forming coalition ‘for war against Russia’

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, centre, with Defense Minister Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu (left) and Putin.

RT.com – June 24, 2022

The actions taken by the EU and NATO essentially amount to the formation of a “new coalition”targeting Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists on Friday, comparing the steps taken by Brussels to the actions of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before attacking the Soviet Union.

Moscow has “no illusions” about the prospect of “Russophobic sentiments” within the EU dissipating any time soon, Lavrov said. Russia will closely follow all the “real steps” taken by the bloc and its candidate states, he added in a probable reference to Ukraine, which was granted EU candidacy status on Thursday.

“Hitler rallied a significant part, if not most, of the European nations under his banner for a war against the Soviet Union,” the foreign minister said, adding that “now, the EU together with NATO are forming another – modern – coalition for a standoff and, ultimately, war with the Russian Federation.”

Lavrov’s remarks came just one day after he branded a proposal to assemble an international naval coalition to escort ships carrying Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea as an attempt to interfere in the region under the auspices of the UN. Such schemes are not needed to facilitate Ukrainian grain exports, he argued, adding that Moscow guarantees vessels security all the way to the Bosphorus Strait, a key Black Sea access channel controlled by Turkey.

Earlier this month, the minister also stated that Washington was seeking to use the conflict in Ukraine to deprive Russia of its independent status on the international arena and force it to play by rules set by the US. America and its allies will not succeed in such an endeavor, he warned at the time.

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

The US and its allies reacted to the development by slapping Russia with an unprecedented number of sanctions, targeting its banking and finance sectors as well as aviation and space industries. The US and Canada put an embargo on oil and gas imports from Russia. The EU followed suit by introducing a partial embargo on Russian oil in early June.

The Western nations have also been supplying Ukraine with weapons since the start of the Russian military operation there.

Source

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4 Responses to “Lavrov – EU and NATO forming coalition ‘for war against Russia’”

  1. Tapestry says:

    Can we see a script starting to appear? Western democracies are being collapsed militarily, economically, spiritually and as regards health, wellbeing of the people, including food supply, while highly authoritarian and corrupted ‘former’ communist and socially divided regimes defeat the west and drive us down and out. The One World Government will be imposed by highly authoritarian BRICS regimes, and the former democracies which are already rotted by Marxist and other atheistic programmes, are collapsed and defeated. Top Russians no doubt are aware of their role in the coming destruction of the west, and the takeover of authoritarianism world wide. They will be the new masters but will not be democratic in any way….our own politicians no doubt are also aware of how we are to be collapsed including Boris Johnson.

  2. sovereigntea says:

    Picking a fight we have no hope of winning.

    RUSI – The Return of Industrial Warfare

    The Capacity of the West’s Industrial Base

    The winner in a prolonged war between two near-peer powers is still based on which side has the strongest industrial base. A country must either have the manufacturing capacity to build massive quantities of ammunition or have other manufacturing industries that can be rapidly converted to ammunition production. Unfortunately, the West no longer seems to have either.

    Presently, the US is decreasing its artillery ammunition stockpiles. In 2020, artillery ammunition purchases decreased by 36% to $425 million. In 2022, the plan is to reduce expenditure on 155mm artillery rounds to $174 million. This is equivalent to 75,357 M795 basic ‘dumb’ rounds for regular artillery, 1,400 XM1113 rounds for the M777, and 1,046 XM1113 rounds for Extended Round Artillery Cannons. Finally, there are $75 million dedicated for Excalibur precision-guided munitions that costs $176K per round, thus totaling 426 rounds. In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

    The US is not the only country facing this challenge. In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.

    Unfortunately, this is not only the case with artillery. Anti-tank Javelins and air-defence Stingers are in the same boat. The US shipped 7,000 Javelin missiles to Ukraine – roughly one-third of its stockpile – with more shipments to come. Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.

    The expenditure of cruise missiles and theatre ballistic missiles is just as massive. The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually, meaning that in three months of combat, Russia has burned through four times the US annual missile production. The Russian rate of production can only be estimated. Russia started missile production in 2015 in limited initial runs, and even in 2016 the production runs were estimated at 47 missiles. This means that it had only five to six years of full-scale production.

    https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/return-industrial-warfare