Putin Says US-Russia Relations Are in ‘Deep Crisis,’ as Moscow’s Senior Diplomats Depict It as a Hot Conflict
“They ought to be aware what any encroachment on our sovereignty, our territorial integrity and our statehood [will entail],” he said. “If this trend persists, we will be ready to take all measures and to use all means at our disposal in order to defend ourselves and ensure that our sovereignty be guaranteed.”
He also said that recent talk about the risk of a nuclear conflict is a “rather dramatic issue,” adding that Russia has repeatedly stressed that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war and that it must not be unleashed.”
“But the way our American opponents are recklessly, provocatively, and in many respects absolutely carelessly moving up the escalation ladder, the way they are blinded by their absolutely absurd certainty about their ability to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia makes one doubt their mental faculties and their common sense,” Ryabkov said.
Speaking separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow needed to maintain relations with Washington even though American supplies of weapons to Ukraine meant “we are really in a hot phase of the war.”
Lavrov told state television that Russia had not yet lost hope that the United States “will wake up to reason [and] will resume some kind of dialogue.”
Nikolai Patrushev, a close Putin ally who chairs Russia’s Security Council, told Tass news agency that “with the assistance of the U.S. and its allies, Kiyv is intensifying its terrorist activity” in four regions of Ukraine that Moscow said last year it was formally annexing.
Russia says it was forced to intervene in Ukraine to stem Western interference that was becoming a threat to its security. But the West and Ukraine have dismissed this as a baseless pretext for a war of conquest.
Putin also urged Denmark to support Russia’s proposal to establish an independent international commission to investigate the blasts last September that ruptured the Nord Stream undersea pipelines bringing gas from Russia to Germany.
“Russia is open for constructive partnerships with all countries without exception. We are not going to isolate ourselves from anyone, we don’t have predetermined or hostile intentions towards anybody.”
Relations between Russia and the West were already strained before it began its “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022 but have plunged even further since then.
Putin previously cited the Azov battalion’s neo-Nazi elements in his justification for invading Ukraine in February 2022, calling for the “denazification” of the region.
The Azov battalion, a volunteer paramilitary organization, was formed in 2014 during the Donbas War in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian forces and pro-Ukrainian forces, following the February 2014 coup.
The Azov battalion was later formally incorporated as a regiment in the National Guard of Ukraine, but not without controversy over the group’s neo-Nazi ties and the use of the wolfsangel symbol, which was also used by Nazi forces in Germany during World War II. The Azov battalion denies being fascist, and Ukraine says it has been reformed from its radical nationalist origins.
Reuters contributed to this report.
