Russian Foreign Minister says NATO should launch strikes on Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that NATO should launch preventive strikes on Russia, confirming the need for a special operation in Ukraine.

Lavrov said that he presented the world with more evidence of the threats posed by the Kyiv regime. A special military operation was launched to neutralise them. Zelenskyy said he believed strikes were necessary to preclude any use of nuclear weapons in a discussion with an Australian think tank on Thursday.

He did not go into detail about what kind of strikes he meant, and made no reference to the need for nuclear strikes.

According to RIA news agency, Zelenskyy's comments were an appeal to start another World War III with unpredictable, monstrous consequences, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Russia launched a military operation to denazify and demilitarise its neighbour. Ukraine and Western nations have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for an invasion.