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'Let NATO fight' if it opposes freezing conflict in Ukraine, says top Russian diplomat

Sergey Lavrov noted that Russia was ready for such a development of events, saying "We have long understood NATO’s goals regarding the situation in Ukraine"

MINSK, June 20. /TASS/. NATO should send its own troops to Ukraine if it is against freezing the ongoing conflict there, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

"If NATO once again uses [its Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg to declare that it is against freezing, as they say, the conflict in Ukraine, then that means they want to fight. So let them fight," Lavrov told reporters after a meeting of the heads of delegations at the CSTO summit with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.

The minister noted that Russia was ready for such a development of events, saying "We have long understood NATO’s goals regarding the situation in Ukraine."

"These objectives were worked out a long time ago, after the state coup [in Ukraine]," he said. "NATO is trying to implement them now."

According to the Russian foreign minister, some politicians and experts in the West "are gradually sobering up and realizing the true reasons and nature behind what is going on in the world," Lavrov said.

However, he added "if they maintain at the same time that they are not waging a war against Russia, when in fact that is exactly what they are doing, admitting that without pumping the Ukrainian regime with weapons, without providing Kiev with intelligence data from satellites, the Ukrainian situation would have been over a long time ago, this is actually recognition of their direct involvement in the hybrid and even hot war declared against Russia."

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Foreign policy Sergey Lavrov NATO

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