MOSCOW, September 8. /TASS/. The European Union is essentially a military bloc now, just like NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Big Game program on TV One.

"I don’t even want to talks about NATO. They keep on saying that the membership in the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union will guarantee their security. This means that the European Union is now a NATO-type military bloc," he said, commenting on Ukraine’s European integration plans.