MOSCOW, May 18. /TASS/. An acute foreign policy confrontation between Russia and the West is "in full swing," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"The acute phase of [Russia’s] military and political confrontation with the West continues. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that it is in full swing. Our European neighbors are showing particular zeal in terms of anti-Russian rhetoric," he pointed out at the 32ndAssembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.
Everyone has heard remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and top EU diplomat Josep Borrell about an inevitable war with Russia, Lavrov noted.
Sergey Lavrov also said people working to convene a conference on Ukraine in Switzerland are wasting their time as the effort is a dead-end.
"We are watching these efforts in sheer astonishment, how grown-up people are engaged in outright nonsense, which has no future," he said 32nd Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.
"I do not believe that they do not understand this," the minister said. "It means the goal is not to achieve peace, but only to turn as many countries as possible against Russia and then try to make some further, now material steps that are hostile to us."
Lavrov said Russia's partners in the Global South understand this.
According to the minister, Russia sees the West's increasing supplies of long-range weapons to Ukraine as a signal that they are not ready for serious talks.
"This means that they have made a choice in favor of settling scores on the battlefield. We are ready for this, always ready," Lavrov went on to say.
"There is no doubt that Russia will defend its interests in Ukraine, the West and Europe," he said. "This is by and large understood by almost all my foreign counterparts around the world, with whom I communicate".
The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said earlier that Bern had invited more than 160 delegations to the conference on Ukraine, including from Group of Seven, Group of Twenty and BRICS countries. According to Swiss officials, Russia has not been invited.