MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The collective West unleashed a hybrid war against Russia in a shameless, rude and aggressive way, when it realized that the plans for turning Ukraine into "anti-Russia" had failed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a meeting with students and teachers at the MGIMO University on Thursday, the first day of the new academic year.
"The events that everyone is discussing today upon return from vacations are connected with what is happening around Ukraine, and, to be honest, with a hybrid war that the collective West unleashed shamelessly, openly, rudely and aggressively against our country, when it realized that the plot for turning Ukraine into "anti-Russia" and its territory into a stronghold for the military containment of Russia had fallen flat, " Lavrov said.
He also stressed that the West tacitly condoned the ban on the Russian language in Ukraine in education, the media and culture. "When were made warnings it was inadmissible to agree, in fact, with the 2014 coup d'etat or to support a regime that came out with Russophobic slogans and began to bomb its own population on its own territory, and when, as a result, it became possible to reach the Minsk agreements in February 2015 and these agreements paved the way for agreement and for closing the above-mentioned problems, it turned out that neither [Ukraine’s ex-President Pyotr] Poroshenko, nor [the incumbent, Vladimir] Zelensky were going to implement any agreements, although these had the approval of the UN Security Council. The West either stayed silent or quietly rejoiced: ‘How effective we are in containing Russia by creating an anti-Russian state right on its border," Lavrov pointed out.
"When they finally realized that all our statements made over these years were not empty persuasions and requests, but reflected the fundamental interests of our state, now, as you can see, they have turned hysterical and been trying to compensate with their unprecedented aggression and malice for their own inability, and - frankly speaking - their own unwillingness to do business on the globe on the basis of equality and mutual respect, on the basis of compliance with the principles of international law, primarily the UN Charter, which asserts the sovereign equality of states," Lavrov stressed.