Russia's top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear force” and delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly full of condemnations of what Russia sees as Western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including within the United Nations itself.
Three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin broadcast a shift in his country's nuclear doctrine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of using Ukraine — which Russia invaded in February 2022 — as a tool to try to “strategically” to defeat' and to 'prepare' Europe. so that it would also plunge into this suicidal escapade.
“I'm not going to talk about the futility and danger of the very idea of fighting for victory with a nuclear power, which is what Russia is,” he said.
The specter of nuclear threats and confrontations has hung over the war in Ukraine since its inception. Shortly before the invasion, Putin reminded the world that his country was “one of the most powerful nuclear states,” and shortly afterward he put his nuclear forces on high alert. His nuclear rhetoric has waxed and waned at various points since then.
On Wednesday, Putin said that if Russia is attacked by a country backed by a nuclear-armed nation, it will consider it a joint attack.
He did not specify whether that would trigger a nuclear response, but he emphasized that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that posed a “critical threat to our sovereignty.”
The United States and the European Union called his statements “irresponsible.”
The new stance was seen as a message to the US and other Western countries as Ukraine seeks permission to attack Russia with longer-range weapons. The Biden administration this week announced another $2.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but that does not include the type of long-range weapons Zelensky is seeking or a green light to use such weapons to reach deep into Russia to hit.
There was no immediate response to Lavrov's speech from the US, where a junior diplomat took notes on the conference chair as he spoke.
More than two and a half years after the fighting, Russia is making slow but continued progress in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has repeatedly struck Russian territory with missiles and drones and embarrassed Moscow with a daring invasion of troops in a border area last month.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy has pushed what he calls a peace formula to end the war. Provisions include expelling all Russian troops from Ukraine, ensuring accountability for war crimes, releasing prisoners of war and deportees, and more.
Lavrov dismissed Zelensky's formula as a 'doomed ultimatum'.
Meanwhile, Brazil and China have drawn up a peace plan that includes holding a peace conference with both Ukraine and Russia and not expanding the battlefield or otherwise escalating fighting. Chinese and Brazilian diplomats promoted the plan at the meeting, attracting a dozen other countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, to join a group of “friends for peace” in Ukraine.
Lavrov said at a news conference on Saturday that Russia was ready to provide assistance and advice to the group, adding that “it is important that their proposals are backed by reality and not just taken from some abstract conversations.”
He said the conflict's resolution depends on solving its “root causes” – which Moscow claims is the Kiev government's repression of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, and NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe over the years , which Russia considers a threat to its security.
___
See more AP coverage of the UN General Assembly at https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations
