The reason for the Russian special operation in Ukraine is the complacency of Western countries after the end of World War II, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with India Today on Tuesday.
"The real reason is the complacency of many countries after the end of World War II, when our Western colleagues, led by the United States, called themselves victors and began pushing NATO eastward in violation of their promises to the Soviet and Russian leadership," he said.
At the same time, as the head of the Russian foreign ministry noted, NATO continued to assure that it was a defense alliance, it was not a threat to Russian security. "But this alliance was a defense alliance when there was NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Then there was the Berlin Wall, both physical and geopolitical. It was quite obvious where the defense line of this alliance was," said the Minister.
Lavrov recalled that when the Warsaw Pact Organization collapsed and the Soviet Union disappeared, the alliance countries decided to move that line of defense eastward and did so five times without explanation. "In the meantime, they set up forward offensive bases, using the former Soviet republics, particularly Ukraine, as a springboard against Russian interests," he added.
"All of these particular events are related to the actions of the United States and the collective West, to their desire to dominate the entire world and demonstrate to everyone that there will be no multipolarity, there will be a unipolar world. Only where they can act - in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia - remote by tens of thousands of kilometers from the US so-called threats - the US can do whatever it wants," Lavrov added.
"But when Russia warns all its colleagues that you are creating a bridgehead against us right on our borders, you are pumping Ukraine with weapons. <...> And, of course, the latest development, because it's all interconnected, is that Ukraine has become a springboard for NATO expansion. They said that Ukraine could become part of NATO and no one can stop it if it has such a desire," he said.
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Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS