MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine was a forced measure that Moscow had to take after having been lied to for years, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Russian and foreign media outlets on Thursday.

"We don’t seek to impose our rules somewhere 10,000 kilometers away. Please, try to understand that it was a forced decision because we had been unable to get through to the other party and had been lied to for 30 years, it turns out," he noted. "This is why we probably will have to make agreements at some point, pledging not to enhance one’s security at the expense of others and abandoning plans to dominate. There should only be equal dialogue. However, our Western colleagues aren’t ready for that and now they are playing the role of the absolute good, making smaller countries act the way they want them to," the Russian top diplomat stressed.

Lavrov warned against drawing premature conclusions about Russia’s military operation. "The operation is underway, it has clear goals, which include the demilitarization of Ukraine to prevent the deployment of weapons that might threaten Russia, the denazification of Ukraine, as the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal has not been overturned yet, and, definitely, the provision of [security] guarantees to Russia with Ukraine outside NATO," he specified.

"The Pentagon built two military biological laboratories in Kiev and Odessa where pathogens were studied. They are now concerned that they will lose control over these labs," Lavrov went on to say. He added that the Americans strongly refused to establish a verification mechanism based on the Biological Weapons Convention and continued to set up military biological facilities along Russia’s borders.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation based on a request from the heads of the Donbass republics. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories and the goal was to demilitarize and denazify the country. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later that the Russian Armed Forces were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. The ministry emphasized that the Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed by precision weapons and there was no threat to civilians.