Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs / EPA
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
The Russian diplomat claims that Moscow has sent a message to the West with the recent use of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrovstated that the recent use of a hypersonic missile in the war in Ukraine was intended for the West to understand that Moscow was ready to use “any means” to avoid defeat.
Lavrov made the statements in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, on Thursday, stating that the West was fighting “to maintain its hegemony over the world, over any country, any region, any continent”.
“We fight for our legitimate security interests,” he said in English.
“We are sending signals and we hope that the last one, two weeks ago, the signal with the new weapons system called Oreshnik… was taken seriously,” Lavrov said.
While insisting that Russia does not want to escalate the situation and wants to “avoid any misunderstanding” with Washington and its partners, Lavrov warned that “we will send additional messages if they do not draw the necessary conclusions.”
Ataque do Oreshnik
Last month, Russia launched the Oreshnik hypersonic missile against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, which Russian President Vladimir Putin described as a test of a missile that he said could not be shot down.
Lavrov said Ukraine missed an opportunity to maintain its territorial integrity by twice rejecting settlement proposals, once before the start of the full-scale war and once during the April 2022 talks in Turkey.
“We didn’t start this war. We have been sending out warnings for years and years and years that pushing NATO closer and closer to our borders will create a problem,” he said.
In the 80-minute interview with Carlson, a right-wing journalist and ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, who earlier this year was the first American journalist to interview Putin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Lavrov said the West should abandon any notion that Russia had no “red lines.”
“If you are following the logic that some Westerners have been saying lately, that they don’t believe Russia has red lines, they have announced their red lines, these red lines are being moved over and over again, this is a very big mistake. serious,” he said.
Moscow is “prepared for any eventuality, but we strongly prefer a peaceful solution through negotiations based on respect for Russia’s legitimate security interests,” Lavrov added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the use of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile “the latest Russian madness” and called for updating air defense systems to face the new threat.
Lavrov also clashed indirectly with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at an annual security meeting in Malta, accusing the West of running the risk of escalation over Ukraine but walking out of the meeting before Blinken and others speakers could respond.
