Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Thursday suggested his country is at “war” with NATO and the European Union over Ukraine, as President Donald Trump rethinks his approach to ending the conflict Russian President Vladimir Putin started more than three years ago.
“NATO and the European Union want to declare, in fact, have already declared a real war on my country and are directly participating in it,” Lavrov said in comments translated by TASS, Russia’s state-owned media agency, at a G20 ministerial conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
His comments come just days after Trump, fresh off a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, backed off his pressure for the two countries to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Saying that Russia resembled a “paper tiger,” he proclaimed emphatically his belief that Kyiv could win the war — and reclaim all of its territory.
Trump also told reporters NATO countries should be empowered to shoot down Russian drones that traverse over their airspace.
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option,” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social. “Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.”
Lavrov on Wednesday met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who urged Moscow to “take meaningful steps toward a durable resolution” to the war and reiterated Trump’s call for an end to the bloodshed, according to a State Department readout.
