EUROPE OF “TRAGEDIES”
Trump, who spoke to Putin on Feb 12 and says he wants to be remembered as a “peace maker”, has upended US policy on the Ukraine war. Lavrov said that the call with Putin had been at Trump’s initiative.
Trump said last week that the war could develop into World War Three, that he had spoken to Putin on “numerous occasions” and that he thought that there would be a deal on Ukraine peace.
On Friday, he and Vice President JD Vance clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Trump accused Zelenskyy of disrespecting the United States, said he was losing the war and had no cards left.
European leaders leapt to Zelenskyy’s defence.
But Lavrov criticised Europe, saying that for the past 500 years Europe had been the crucible of “all the tragedies of the world” including colonisation, wars, crusaders, the Crimean War, Napoleon Bonaparte, World War One and Adolf Hitler.
“And now, after (former US President Joe) Biden’s term, people have come in who want to be guided by common sense. They say directly that they want to end all wars, they want peace,” Lavrov said.
“And who demands a ‘continuation of the banquet’ in the form of a war? Europe.”
Lavrov also dismissed European ideas for sending in a contingent of European peacekeepers and said Russia had no trust in Ukraine after the collapse of the Minsk agreements, which were designed to end a separatist war by Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Europeans, Lavrov said, could not explain what rights Russian speakers would have under the European peacekeeper plans, adding that Russia did not like the idea of Europeans propping up Zelenskyy.
“Now they also want to prop him up with their bayonets in the form of peacekeeping units. This will mean that the root causes will not disappear,” Lavrov said.
