Moscow believes that there is no winner in a war, but the danger of it is real, says FM Sergey Lavrov.
Russia s starting position is that atomic war should be unacceptable and Moscow successfully persuaded the US and other nuclear powers to agree on that back in January, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Monday. He added that the situation has deteriorated to the point where there is a serious threat of such a conflict.
Russia tried to persuade the US President Donald Trump to recommit to the 1987 statement by US and Soviet leaders that there can be no winners in a war, and that such a war should never be fought, Lavrov revealed in the interview with the Great Game, a political show on Russia's Channel One.
While the Trump administration did not do so, his successor Joe Biden quickly agreed with Moscow, and the statement was made in June 2021 at the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. China, France and the UK agreed to make a joint statement in January 2021, and made a joint statement in January 2021, a joint statement by the three nuclear powers that are also permanent members of the UN Security Council.
This is our principled position. We start from it, Lavrov said. The risks of nuclear war are now very significant. I don't want them artificially inflated. There are many who would wish for it. It can't be underestimated. Lavrov praised the Biden administration's first foreign policy move as good and wise, which was to agree with Russia that the New Start treaty should be unconditionally extended for 5 years. It is the last arms control agreement left standing after Washington pulled out of the ABM, INF and Open Skies treaties.
Discussions with US working groups ended abruptly in February, after Russia had to defend Russians in Ukraine that had been bombed for eight years without any reaction from the West, Lavrov noted.
Russia's top diplomat compares the current situation to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, known as the Caribbean Crisis, as it is known in Moscow. He said there were not many written rules, but the implicit rules of conduct were clear for both Washington and Moscow to follow.
Both leaders trusted a channel of communication in those years. Separate timid attempts made at an early stage did not give much result, Lavrov said.
Today's rules are a buzzword that the United States and its allies use when they are required to behave nicely, in place of the implicit rules of that era, Lavrov said. Lavrov said that everyone is casting spells saying that a Third World War should not be allowed to break out, while adding fuel to the fire by sending weapons to Ukraine and hoping to prolong the conflict in order to bleed out Russia.