The US and NATO are directly involved in the war in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
“You shouldn’t say that the US and NATO aren’t taking part in this war. You are directly participating in it,” Lavrov said at a press conference.
“And not just by providing weapons but also by training personnel. You are training their military on your territory, on the territories of Britain, Germany, Italy, and other countries,” he added.
Lavrov made the comments while defending Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, which have left millions of civilians without power and heat as temperatures are dropping. He said that Russia is “disabling” energy infrastructure that allows the US and NATO to “pump Ukraine with deadly weapons to kill Russians”
Lavrov also warned that any conventional war between nuclear-armed powers comes with a huge risk of nuclear escalation. He said that any war between nuclear powers is “unacceptable.”
“Even if someone plans to start it by conventional means, the risk of escalation into a nuclear war will be enormous,” Lavrov added.
President Biden warned in October that the world was closer to “nuclear armageddon” than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. While there has been an increase in communication between the US and Russia, there’s no sign that Washington is willing to back down on its support for Ukraine, risking an escalation that could one day lead to direct fighting with Moscow.
“The nuclear card” — hmm, guess they won’t play it? Let’s all play Russian roulette with nukes. What could go wrong.
I’m so glad you are being rhetorical… 🙂
Russia is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They wanted the cake and eat it too. They’ll be lucky if they can get couple of cupcakes.
Swap the US for Russia and you make just as much sense if not more. It’s like the gas cap scheme, unwisely intelligent wonks think they can engineer win win for us, lose lose for them scenarios. We all win just peace, or we all lose, simple as that.
False equation. Anyone who’s studied Russian history & culture should recognize the dialectic between mystical North and Mediterranean greed. It were salutary (not to say salvific) to correct the imbalance
-gone on much too long, killed and immiserated too many billions, and now imminently threatens the very survival of the species.
The gas cap scheme is amazing, why didn’t they think of it before? Makes me mad really we could have been paying $22 a barrel for all the years.
Except there wouldn’t be any oil developed. Also, enslaving a population doesn’t end well. EU colonial efforts in other regions eventually failed. EU attempts of enslaving Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union have also failed.
The EU is crumbling. Their manufacturing base is in decline. Natural resources are either depleted or have been undermined by economic policies made by political hacks and incompetent fools.
How so? What exactly is stopping Russia from liberating entire Europe from North American Terrorist Occupation?
The same thing that’s stopping me from bench-pressing 2,000 pounds.
Plus, you’d really need a good multi-ply bench shirt.
Aw, Thomas, you KNOW you can do it if you really try! 😉
Artillery, soldiers, supply chains, tanks, air forces, navies bunch of stuff really.
Enlightened self interest. Russia isn’t stupid. The only reason Russia is in areas claimed by the criminal Ukrainian regime is because it’s on Russia’s border and highly populated by ethnic Russians. The criminal Ukrainian regime along with the bellicose NATO alliance is a threat to the Russian Federation and the people that live in it.
Russia may go as far as the break away Russian dominated part of Moldova.
Five thousand nukes pointing at Moscow?
That’s not a threat. There are twice as many pointing at Washington and London.
And the kind that will reach their targets instead of falling apart like your shuttles.
Very deep analysis. Do you bake, too?
I’m still waiting for that mission accomplish banner.
In other words, Russia never was a threat to Europe and NATO.
Certainly not by any conventional means.
“They wanted the cake and eat it too. They’ll be lucky if they can get couple of cupcakes.”
Uh…tee-hee?
Posted 9 hrs ago? Know about how many Ukrainian and Russian kids have slaughtered each other in Bakhmut since yr little witticism?
Ah-ah! – donnn’t touch that search button. Guess.
This was obvious since the start of the civil war in Ukraine back in 2014. It was Anglo-American grunts who started the war. Right now Russians are mostly killing Anglo-American grunts in Ukraine. I see no reason to allow these pests to destroy Europe. Instead of dealing with Anglo-American puppets in Kiev, Kremlin should have attacked US and England directly. They want war, they should get it.
Yikes! better Germany, France & Italy declare a separate peace. They never wanted this, can’t see where they derive ought but negatives from it, and would probably be very popular. Like Sodom & Gomorrah they just need to find one good man.
They don’t have any choice. Any country occupied by North American Terrorists is just a vassal state with expendable population. The entire idea of North American Terrorist Occupation is to create war in Europe and keep US and England without war.
Yes, it has that smell. The more reason
French have been trying to remove occupational regime for 4 years already and they aren’t getting anywhere. Italians got spirit but Germans… they will always obey and do what they are told.
That’s the nature of all bourgeois regimes. They’re not autonomous agents, 3rd or 4th level at best. On the level of crisis in the war in Ukraine, policy would come down from on high. Europe is in a critical moment economically and militarily, and frozen rigid, not just by winter, but, as you say, the prospect of continental war. It’s not unlikely their Bilderberg lords are sending the message that it’s too high a price for Putin’s head. Scholtz and Maroni are just hack politicians, Macron is an intellectual in his own right (and as you point out has been trying for some time to loosen the grip of Washington) and as such could in this instance be given more latitude, and trusted by his masters to take the lead in crunch time, a time when they are out of sync with their US frat bro’s, …? The wrath of sanctions, champaign boycotts, and “liberty fries’ would descend upon him, but a leaky boat has to abandon excess cargo.
Have you done the math on that? Russia will lose and lose badly or global thermonuclear war which technically would be a tie.
I have. Have you? Russian hypersonic missiles against your antique subs? No contest.
But if you want to go just by the numbers, Russian Federation have more nuclear warheads than US.
It wont be a tie. Your nukes simply wont get to Russia. Pentagon cowards wouldn’t be hiding behind Europeans and developing cowardly biological weapons if they could beat Russia.
I would like to point out that this is an antiwar website and if this is truly how you feel, perhaps there are better places for you to be…
>Lavrov made the comments while defending Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure
Ukrainian trains that bring NATO-trained troops, NATO guns and NATO ammunition to the east where they bomb the civilians in Donbass, run mostly on electricity. Cutting off the electricity is a defensive maneuver. And much better than bombing civilians to get your way, like the Biden-paid Kiev regime does. Soon Biden’s thugs will be stopped for good and the city of Donetsk will finally be free from the constant artillery attacks. Even Zelensky admitted in March that the war isn’t new, it has been going on for eight years.
When Washington invaded Iraq, the first thing they did was bomb all the power stations around Baghdad.
When NATO attacked Serbia for the crime of expelling a wave of illegal aliens from Kosovo, after the drug-smuggling UCK guerilla had started burning churches and killing Serbs – including firing at children bathing in a river – they bombed all the bridges, the power stations, all the essential infrastructure. And handed over Serbian Kosovo to the Albanian invaders. General “Sandy” Berger proclaimed, “In today’s Europe there is no place for ethnically pure states.” For him and Madeleine Albright it was a holy anti-White war. They forced destitute Serbian cities to swear fealty to the aggressors in order to get food, and oil to heat the homes in the winter. Finally security guards from these de facto occupied cities were dressed in civilian clothing and sent to attack president Milosevic’s home, as a “citizen protest,” to illegally kidnap him and hand him over to the Hague for a trial about Bosnia. (Where he was put in a small, cold cell, which ruined his health and killed him. After his death he was finally found not guilty; he had never approved of Karadzic’s war crimes in Bosnia and instead tried to stop him.)
So complaining about Russia’s tactics for the defense of Donbass is extreme hypocrisy. The New York Times PRAISED the bombing of Serbia’s infrastructure. And they approve of Biden’s occupation of Syria’s oil fields. Syrians need that oil to heat their homes in the winter.
Bombing the electricity network is not a war crime as you point out but is it the best way to prevent the flow of weapons and soldiers? Would it not have been better to bomb the relatively few bridges that cross the Dnieper?
If they bomb (mainly or even to a significant degree) the civilians in the Donbas – and the Russians still have a significant dominance in artillery, how come that the Russian progress has stalled? How come the Russians had to vacate so much territory in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts?
Why is it that you believe that the Ukrainians are bombing civilians when you can see the protest when the Russians take a city and the celebrations when the Ukrainians take it back?
What do you mean admitted – this has been the Ukrainian line all the time – i.e. that the separatists in the Donbas were always primarily funded and supported by the Russians so this invasion is just an expansion of the war Russia was already waging in Ukraine.
usual crap disguised as objective commenting. You might be credible if your opposition to the prevailing point here weren’t the polar opposite.
The truth about human events is never completely one-sided. The Russians most certainly sent in people to help their ethnic partners in the East, as has the US on too numerous a count to re-recite in other theaters.
Your adherence to DC’s propaganda makes your comments comically revealing.
My opposition to what prevailing argument? That the US is not directly involved? If so it is not as if I made a secret of it.
Quite apart from it being wrong this is a clear case of a whataboutery argument. The US has not intervened in any conflicts in the last many years to help their ethnic partners – they have intervened without having any ethnic excuse whatsoever. But that the US has done so does not in any way excuse that the Russians did it, moreover it does not excuse that Putin takes this a very crucial step further and annexes Ukrainian territory.
You don’t like “whataboutery” because it exposes hypocrisy and inconsistent thinking.
No I do not like whataboutery because it is an attempt to justify the crimes of Paul by the crimes of Peter – and that is just wrong.
Well, at least with your answer you are admitting to the war crimes of the USA.
I’m not admitting to the war crimes of the US, I’m just acknowledging that they have committed them – for me to admit to them I have to be partially guilty in them – as I’m a Dane and have opposed all the wars that the US foisted upon unwilling nations I do not feel any such guilt to the degree that I feel compelled to ‘admit’.
Well, I am half Danish, and I do admit to the war crimes my country has committed.
As do I – we the Danes that is, did commit what we (the Danes) would consider a war crime in e.g. Afghanistan (and Iraq), by handing over prisoners to the British for interrogation. But how is that relevant here?
As a Dane that supports NATO, you have supported NATO atrocities. The fact that you feel no guilt is telling.
While the DC psychopaths led the way in wars of choice and of aggression, EU sycophants enabled them.
How do you arrive at the conclusion that I support NATO or NATO crimes – is it by my mere existence?
I do support my governments support of Ukraine and I do so because the Russians if allowed to annex territory will set a dangerous example for other nations to follow annexing territory through war and there by strengthening their nations – making war of aggression a net benefit to nations is a very dangerous thing.
The fact that you have not considered this is very telling, as is the idea that you assume things on my behalf.
for me to admit to them I have to be partially guilty in them – as I’m a Dane and have opposed all the wars that the US foisted upon unwilling nations I do not feel any such guilt to the degree that I feel compelled to ‘admit’.”
That’s what I call a short term memory.
As for your claim of national borders? Anything a state does within it’s borders is OK? A government never forfeits its right to rule a populace? Regardless of it’s actions?
Good to know what you stand for. And what you are.
So remind me what is it that I’m forgetting?
Within its internationally recognized borders yes otherwise no.
If that is some kind of order then you got it in one.
Yep. People have no rights, only rulers. Got it. No wonder you support this regime.
Just for laughs, suppose a outside nation overthrows the government of Denmark. That government is recognized by the U.N. as the legitimate government. Then the new government decided it doesn’t like some of the people that live there. They start to round up those that the government doesn’t approve of. Forbid those people the right to have jobs. To worship of not. To have families, to travel freely.
All OK, right? After all, the state, right?
No people have plenty of rights only other nations do not have the right to intervene to safeguard the rights of people on the other side of the border.
This would only happen if the interim government held new democratic elections thereby legitimizing the ousting of the previous government – you know like they did in Ukraine.
That did not happen in Ukraine – the Russians helped organize a separatist movement and them using weapons against the Kyiv government got them taken – so the parallel breaks down if you use non events to justify the actions of the Russians.
No the Ukrainian government proposed laws to outlaw the use of Russian as an official language – not for Russian speakers not to have a job worship have family or travel – if you want to make these assertions you have to provide evidence that this was Ukrainian government policy.
If this had been Ukrainian government policy before Russia helped start a separatist war in the Donbas then they would have been able to get support for sanctions on Ukraine in the UN – they did not make the case and they helped start the insurrection instead.
As indicated you have not made a parallel to what happened in the real world so…
I disagree with Lavrov. The risk for nuclear war will not be enormous–it already is. We’re just one stupidly obvious false flag away.
Put Joe in a wheelchair while he is wearing his aviator sunglasses and you have Dr. Stangelove.
“We must not allow a mineshaft gap!!”
I laughed out loud!!!
Considering that Russians holding rallies in Moscow to nuke Washington, I’d say the risk is very high. And Kremlin have the legal precedent for a nuclear strike. The imperial puppet regime in Kiev is attacking Russian territory.
Does this situation concern anyone?… We could find ourselves in a much larger conflict and one that could potentially go nuclear?…. It concerns me.
Not really, the Russians talk tough but they always blink. There were at least two separate instances where local commanders should have unleashed nuclear weapons and didn’t.
Russia isn’t USSR, johnny. Right now it is entirely different social mindset. You better put a leash on your parasites before something bad happens.
Well, the fate of the planet is in the hands of a TV/movie actor and a president teetering on the verge of senility.
Is there a problem? /s
😉
Nailed it!
It’s almost heart warming that the US/NATO are managing to piss off so many countries at the same time…!
The other day China and Russia held a joint bomber flight. Hoping that rattled the cages in D.C..
Well the good news is the US and USSR have survived “direct conflict” as defined by Lavrov at least twice before. USSR supplied North Vietnam and the US did not go after the Soviet supply chain, did not target Soviet supply ships etc. In Afghanistan we returned the favor and supported the religious wackos.
A good unbiased analysis of Putin’s challenge with Crimea.
https://youtu.be/IIE1g8kqIpk
Define unbiased.
https://www.rt.com/russia/567542-russia-upgrade-himars-air-defense/
Russian troops get upgrade against HIMARS – RIA
The Russian MOD is disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. What they loose in the Ukraine, they loose for the final NATO global war.
Russia is inflicting a 10:1 kill ratio. According to Ursula von der Leyen over 100,000 Ukrainian officers dead. Probably twice that seriously injured and an estimated 1300 NATO polish officers (mercenaries) killed.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
336 Aircraft, 177 helicopters, 2599 UAV’s, 391 Anti Aircraft systems, 6953 tanks inc. APC’s, 908 multiple rocket launchers, 3648 rocket launchers and 7437 military automotive equipment.
If you really believe this how do you explain the lack of Russian progress?
Uh, you do realise that about 20% of the area claimed by the Ukraine regime isn’t in Ukraine anymore, right?
It is Ukraine in the view of the UN – that is what matters not what the Russians think.
Who cares what the U.N. thinks? Countries decide. People decide.
So you are actually for a chaotic future of wars all over the planet.
No. I’m for people rejecting oppressive governments.
We have chaotic wars all over the planet now. Most of those are the results of attempts by some to dominate and control others. I’m against that.
The false dichotomy you present is the problem. There will be endless wars and chaos if not for nation states and a rules based order. That’s the exact argument used to justify the USA being the police man of the world. Which has led to…..endless wars.
So against Putin!?
No we do not, not by the scale we had before we started sanctioning wars of territorial conquest.
There are fairly many wars, if territorial conquest becomes the new normal there will be a lot more – simply because you make the potential gains of war much greater – is this so hard to understand?
Putin is very popular in the RF. All governments are somewhat oppressive. The RF is better than most. Ukraine is one of the worst in the world.
You think that a government owns it’s people. They are slaves to those that control that government. I believe people own themselves. I believe that people have the right to dissolve the bonds of a government and seek another system of state to govern them.
No Russia is worse than Ukraine the simple measure is that running against Putin is unhealthy – running against the Ukrainian President has at each election led to a new President being elected.
No whatever gave you that idea?
As do I, but there is a path to secession and that path is not through the intervention of foreign governments.
The foreign intervention WAS the 2014 coup. The secession resulted from that coup. You keep on trying to put that cat back in the bag and it isn’t going to work. The emerging ethno state of Ukraine is underway now. This state is increasingly dominated by neo-Nazi types.
Ukraine, as a unified state ended in 2014. The people in Crimea and the Donbas rejected the illegitimate Ukrainian regime THEN. Attempts to put Humpty Dumpty back together again failed. Minsk accords.
The sooner this fact is accepted, the sooner this war and killing will end. Ukraine can still survive if action is taken now. Else Ukraine will be a sad land locked poor and dependent state
Damage to the EU can be limited at this point. If this continues, the EU will be substantially harmed politically and economically.
You and Russia have failed to establish that it was a foreign coup moreover you have failed to establish that that the elections held following the ousting of the legitimate government were not democratic and that the governments after August 2014 were not enjoying public support.
we have proof that the insurrection in the Donbas was Russian supported and initiated with Russian help – that pretty much makes that illegitimate.
So no the international community is not likely to support this kind of Russian interference in the domestic affairs of a neighbor – it would be too destabilizing for the world if they did.
EU knows that it will be harmed either way, and is by now thoroughly convinced that the cost of allowing Russian aggression to be met with success is by far the higher cost.
I happen to believe that they are right – the consequence of allowing wars of territorial conquest to be successful will throw the world into a decades (at least) long era of conflicts and military arms race, not to mention nuclear proliferation.
Intentionally sticking with short supply lines, sticking the US with long supply lines, reducing the amount of territory the US can use our … freedom fighters on, and increasing the number of people that the US is responsible for feeding and heating.
Not to mention the fact that Russia has been crushing it on the diplomatic front. India buys as much stuff as Russia can send to them, trade between India, China, and Russia is in Rubles, Rupees, and Yuan, Saudia Arabia and UAE have turned against the US and pro-Russia, Iran is becoming tight with Russia, and even NATO nation Turkey is aligning more with Russia and less with the US. A very anti-US leader of Pakistan was removed from office – the US insists there is no proof that the US had anything to do with it – and the new guy is aligning with Russia and India and against the US.
Oh yeah – the Russian economy is not crumbling. Russia will move forward when it is ready.
How does this explain the lack of Russian progress?
The Russians have increased their sales to India and China – that primarily based on oil sold at a substantial rebate – if you have links that document Russian export successes that come anywhere near compensating for their export losses then I’d be most interested to see them.
Again evidence of this would be very welcome – because what I hear is that the Russians are themselves admitting that things are not going their way.
Add Latin America to your list.
Yes, Polish merc casualties are probably much higher. They had 1k killed back in July. And there are about 1k dead Anglo-American mercs and so-called ‘instructors’. AFU was ordered to burn the bodies of active service members in order to make it more difficult to id them.
Once again Nato is playing with nuclear fire. Ukraine is not and cannot be part of Nato –understood ?
The weather in Ukraine just turned to freezing and the ground is
firming. Between General Winter and General Sergei “Armageddon”
Surovikin a day of reckoning is coming.
Temperatures for the next few days show temperatures ranging from 18F to 28F degrees. Wind chill is forecast at -1F to 18F for the next few days.
Russian missile strikes have deprived Ukraine of electricity for their electric locomotives so resupply of troops with food and fuel is limited.
Wars are won or lost in the less sexy venue of supply lines and logistics which dictate what armies can do with combat operations.
Yes. An army marches on it’s stomach.
Is it true that there are israeli snipers operating with the Ukranians against the Russians?
I’ve no idea personally, but it would make perfect sense.
IsraHell would love nothing more than to see the establishment of Ziolensky’s “big Israel”.
Oh there are all kind of mercs fighting for the terrorist occupational regimein Ukraine. Russians pop them like flies. There were about 5k of ‘international legion’ mercenaries just in Mariupol alone. Pretty much all of them are now fertilizer.
Wouldn’t it be nice if world leaders would be dosed with truth serum
instead of a vaccine? Many more lives would be saved. The following might result.
***”President Biden bragged in October that the world was closer to “nuclear armageddon” than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.”.
“Other US presidents have come close, but only I have been able get THIS close. I give credit to President Obama for for setting the stage for this achievement with the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in that lovely coup he sponsered. I also give thanks to the support of the GOP in this bipartisan effort to get a lot of people killed.”