MOSCOW, April 9. /TASS/. The European Union has transformed into an economic branch of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday, commenting on EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s remarks about a military solution to the Ukraine conflict.
"So much for the ‘economic organization’! It is no longer the European Union. It is merely NATO’s department for economic relations," the diplomat wrote in her Telegram channel.
During his visit to Kiev, Borrell said for the first time in the history of the European Union that the conflict "will be won on the battlefield," but not through diplomatic efforts.
EU leaders never made any statements about the priority of the military victory over the political solution during the wars in Yugoslavia, or in Libya, or in Afghanistan, where most of the EU nations were involved as NATO members. Nor were any such statements voiced during the US-led invasion of Iraq, which the leading EU countries condemned as based on disinformation and lies about Baghdad’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.