MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. When there’s talk that the West could supply F-16 warplanes to Ukraine, Russia has to bear in mind that the jets have the capability of carrying nuclear weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"Anything can be expected from the leaders of the US and other Western countries (which Washington has completely subjugated). They are already proving this when, following advanced long-range weapons and tanks, they are now seriously preparing F-16s. Some people say two squadrons are set to be transferred, others say there will be eight. They are preparing to continue to escalate the war that was unleashed against us," he said during a visit to a Russian military base in Tajikistan, according to a statement on the ministry’s website. "There is a lot of talk about where these planes will take off from. Our armed forces and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces understand this perfectly and report it to the supreme commander-in-chief. We must keep in mind that one of the modifications of the F-16 has the capability to deliver nuclear weapons. If they do not understand this, then they are worthless as military strategists and planners."
"We are peaceful people. The only thing we want is to be left alone, so that no one tries to drag us into any US-led globalist organizations and mechanisms," the Russian minister went on to say.
According to Lavrov, the Westerners want Russia to be "part of that global majority that the Americans, the Anglo-Saxons together with their allies simply exploited, as they used to do in colonial times.
"To put it simply, they want to live at someone else's expense," the minister stated.
"We had hopes after the Soviet Union vanished that we were opponents no longer, as was stated, and that NATO would never expand. They lied and continued to lie all these years on any issue that was one way or the other settled with them in the context of agreements on equal security (or even the appearance of equal security). Nothing worked. Neither the promise that NATO would not expand, and when it did, nor that there would be no military infrastructure on the territory of new members. The mediation efforts in February 2014 did not work, either, when they signed the papers and the next day there was a coup [in Kiev]. The Minsk agreements did not work either, despite being approved by the UN Security Council," he added.
Lavrov mentioned that former leaders of Germany and France - Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, not to mention former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko - admitted last year that "they did not intend to fulfill anything."
"They needed time to funnel weapons into Ukraine against the Russian Federation," the minister said.