MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. The West is effectively waging a war against Russia in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Solovyov Live television.

"They are already waging it," he said to a remark by the host that the West appears to have declared a war on Russia. Excerpts from the interview were broadcast by Rossiya-1 television and the Smotrim platform.

When asked whether a direct clash with NATO is inevitable, the minister said he was unaware about the alliance's plans.

"It looks like they will be devious. They will either say, like the Germans: 'We will remotely direct deadly weapons against Russian cities,' or they will say it’s just instructors who sit watching what the Ukrainians are doing," Lavrov said.

According to the minister, the West is exasperated because its plans are being upset.

"The worse it gets on the battlefield, the more rabid are the statements coming out of the West, saying things like we can’t let Ukraine lose and Russia win," he said.

The minister said French President Emmanuel Macron, a couple of weeks before he made the public statement that sending troops to Ukraine shouldn’t be ruled out, had tried to get NATO to support the idea.

"They told him they thought it was a bad idea. Nevertheless, he made it public. The French foreign minister later had to make corrections. As a result, the French president said that there wasn’t full consensus, but nothing can be ruled out, and his position remained just that, and they will think about what else needs to be done to help Ukraine, including in terms of sending their troops to Ukrainian territory," the minister said.