Russia-Ukraine crisis: 'Won't let interests be trampled on,' says Russia's Foreign Min

Amid soaring tension between Russia, Ukraine and the Western countries, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on Friday, asserted that "Moscow does not want war but added it won’t allow its security interests to be overlooked." According to the Russian News agency, TASS, Lavrov's statement came during an interview with a radio station on Friday. "There won't be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation, we don’t want a war. But we won’t let our interests be rudely trampled on and ignored," Lavrov said during the interview. Further, he said that the talks between the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) have not concluded.

"As you know, the Americans and NATO members have studied our simple proposals contained in the drafts of an agreement with Washington and an agreement with the NATO for over a month and we received the answers only the day before yesterday," TASS quoted the top diplomat as saying during the interview.

According to him, the slow response of the western countries has muddied the waters in many ways. It is worth mentioning that the tension between Russia and Ukraine soared tremendously over the US intelligence reports that claim Russian forces have reportedly made all preparations to "invade Ukraine". However, Russian President Vladimir Putin refuted the US intelligence reports and called the allegations "baseless" on multiple occasions. On Monday, NATO said that it’s putting in extra forces on standby and deploying more ships and fighter jets to Eastern Europe. According to the news agency, AP, the intergovernmental military alliance averred that it's beefing up its “deterrence” presence in the Baltic Sea area.

US sanctions $200 million military aid to Ukraine

Moreover, the US is mulling deploying additional forces to Eastern European NATO countries, CNN reported citing sources. Last week, the US sanctioned an additional amount of $200 million to Kyiv in a bid to boost its military power against Moscow. It had also approved three NATO allies to rush anti-armour missiles and other US-made weapons to Ukraine. While speaking to AP, an official on the condition of anonymity, said that the aid was approved as a part of US efforts to help Ukraine protect itself. 

Image: AP