Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that “the United States can cheat at any moment,” claiming Russia had experienced this when the Western military alliance NATO expanded eastward.
“I want to emphasize that everyone knows very well that the United States can cheat at any moment, and much more often they cheat than they keep their own promises, their own proposals,” Lavrov said as he addressed a press conference following talks with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto.
Russia has long complained that it was tricked by Western nations at the end of the Cold War into believing that NATO, the Western military alliance, would not expand eastward toward its territory. Analysts say, however, that the Soviet Union was never offered any formal guarantee on limits to NATO expansion and that the “betrayal narrative” is designed to provoke anti-Western sentiment.
Lavrov’s latest comments come as he carries out a tour of Latin American countries this week, a trip seen as a way for Russia to cement its alliances with countries in the region.
Kremlin rejects media allegations on possible North Sea sabotage plans
The Kremlin rebuffed Western media reports alleging that Russia could be planning to sabotage wind farms and communications cables in the North Sea, saying they are baseless.
“These media of the mentioned countries [Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland] made a mistake in their investigation, they again baselessly prefer to blame Russia for everything,” Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, state news agency TASS reported.
The comment come after a joint investigation by the public broadcasters of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland which claims that Russia has a fleet of vessels in the North Sea disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels that are actually intended for surveillance, mapping and possibly, sabotage.
The allegations are due to be aired in a TV series starting Wednesday evening and broadcast in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Peskov said Moscow would “prefer that they pay more attention to the topic of the terrorist attack on [the] Nord Stream” gas pipelines, saying “the need for a transparent, urgent and broad international investigation of these unprecedented terrorist acts, sabotage.”
Russia has repeatedly complained of being left out of separate investigations by Sweden, Germany and Denmark into the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage that damaged the Baltic Sea infrastructure last year.
Source: Consumer News Business Channel
