Lavrov blasts US for waging 'hybrid war' & threatening others to not engage with Russia

The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, who arrived in South Africa on a working visit on Monday blasted the United States for starting a 'global hybrid war' against Russia, and added that Washington under the Biden administration was "crossing red lines." Speaking at a joint press conference after meeting with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor in the capital, Pretoria, Lavrov discussed the ongoing military conflict on Europe's eastern flank, Ukraine, saying that it was a result of United States' implicit push and illegitimate methods to exercise its dominance, as well as its attempts of reinforcing its global position. 

US in 'global hybrid war' with Russia

"What is happening in Ukraine now is the result of preparations by the US and its satellites for the start of a global hybrid war against the Russian Federation. Nobody is hiding this fact. This is clear from statements by unbiased Western philologists, scientists, and politicians," Lavrov asserted. Russia's Foreign Minister cited the recent analysis by Ian Bremmer, a political science professor at Columbia University, that read: “We are not in a cold war with Russia. We are in a hot war with Russia. Now it's a proxy war. And NATO is not fighting it directly. We are fighting it through Ukraine.” 

Lavrov further reiterated statements of President of Croatia Zoran Milanovic, affirming that Russia's military operation ordered by President Vladimir Putin "is a NATO war." He then evoked ex-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's take on the Ukrainian conflict in an opinion piece, wherein he labelled it as a "clash, a rivalry of two nuclear powers."

"Our Western partners are 'cunning' while vehemently trying to prove that they are not fighting Russia, but helping Ukraine respond to an 'aggression' and restore its territorial integrity," asserted Lavrov. "The scale of their support makes it clear that the West has staked a great deal on its war against Russia; this is obvious," he furthermore noted. 

Lavrov said that US-established global mechanisms and institutions have lost significance and that everything the 'Western globalization model' relied on, has collapsed overnight. The US and its allies imposed sanctions on Russia, as well as other countries that refuse to comply with the West's tenets and mechanisms.

"Sanctions can be imposed [by the US and its allies] any time on any country, which, in one way or another, refuses to mindlessly follow American orders," stressed Lavrov, adding that the European Union is "totally subsumed by US dictatorship." He then derided the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation signed on January 10, saying that it explicitly states that the NATO alliance and the EU’s goal is to use all political, economic, and military means to make billions of dollars from wars.

🔴 #LIVE: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa Dr. Naledi Pandor hold a joint news conference 🇷🇺🇿🇦 https://t.co/r6OWqOrfXQ

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) January 23, 2023

"To quote High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, the rest of the world is a 'jungle' that stifles progress in the 'garden' [Western world] and must, therefore, be reformatted," Lavrov quoted Borrell.

US and the West aims to turn other nations "into new-style colonies" to "ruthlessly pump out their resources," Russia's Foreign Minister asserted. 

US 'on course of destroying other nations, forming military blocs', says Russia

The United States and its Western allies "are on the course of destroying ties of other nations in different regions -- fragmenting and destabilizing them," claimed Lavrov. He further stated that this trend is noticeable in the Balkans [Kosovo-Serbia], post-Soviet nations, Indo-Pacific region, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus. The US is "putting together military blocs" to rival decades-old mechanisms and formats of cooperation among other nations such as ASEAN. "A shining case in point is the military alliance AUKUS, an Anglo-Saxon bloc in Asia, which includes the US, the UK, and Australia," said Lavrov, adding that Japan is being urged to join. Tokyo is "militarising again" on recommendations of the United States, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government is readying to alter the articles in its constitution and snub WWII neutrality. 

Policies of US and the West "as a whole as the main problem creating difficulties in the world," asserted Lavrov, adding that the US wants to dictate international affairs, and Americans, precisely, can do anything anywhere they want."

The Russian minister accused the West of fuelling the Maidan Uprising in Ukraine and supporting the 2014 coup that overthrew the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. He accused the US and Europe of imperialism, as the proxy troops from the Right Sector and the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party had overthrown Ukraine's government. "Ukraine had to choose sides and decide who it was with, the West or Russia," said Lavrov, but the US consistently promoted and pushed its own interest in Ukraine.

"Those who chose to bond with the Russian Federation owing to historical and family ties, and their traditions were ruthlessly criminally prosecuted," Lavrov said, justifying Russia's need for a military operation in Ukraine. NATO, the US, and the EU used the “either with the West or Russia” propaganda in Ukraine, stated Lavrov. 

While the NATO-EU Declaration is being touted as an "alliance of democracies" against autocracies, it is aimed to fuel the global rivalry, claimed the Foreign Minister of Russia. "It is West's patently confrontational agenda" to divide the world, he alleged. The Joint Declaration "directly subordinates Europe to NATO," and includes commitments to "serve US interests" for geopolitical containment of Russia, China, and other countries," he noted. It is a "US-led alliance to achieve global preeminence." 

'India, our strategic partner, has immense potential'

Russia's Foreign Minister praised strategic partners India and China, saying that its allies are developing economically. India, China, Türkiye, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, and many African countries—have immense natural resources, and their development potential is enormous, said Lavrov. "The West is trying to prevent this by exploiting the mechanisms that serve interests within the globalization framework," he asserted. The use of the US dollar as a reserve currency accomplishes just that, he warned. This is why Russia is fostering SCO, BRICS, the CIS, and the EAEU, and cooperation with associations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, to create a new reserve currency and "avoid dependence on the West and its neocolonialist methods." 

"President of Russia Vladimir Putin spoke about this frankly and clearly," said Russian minister.