ROME, July 14. /TASS/. The United States and NATO at the Vilnius summit demonstrated "political irresponsibility and cynicism" combined with lies, palming off the Alliance's actions as being aimed at peacekeeping while at the same time suggesting to continue the conflict with a nuclear power, Russia, former Italian ambassador to Tehran and Beijing, diplomat Alberto Bradanini, said in an interview with TASS on Friday.
"What came out of the NATO summit in Vilnius was pathetic and dangerous. First of all because it was full of fabricated lies, according to which the US NATO is meant to defend peace and stability, not to support American imperial pathology, impose unipolar domination and squeeze even more than in the past wealth and prosperity out of a Europe incapable of the least bit of dissent or having its own opinion," the Italian diplomat said.
Bradanini drew attention to such alarming signals as the designation of some other countries as allegedly posing a threat to democracy in the West in the final document.
"The conclusions of this summit are dangerous also because in the verbose and unintelligible text (11,256 words full of ideology, prejudice and lies) of the final document, other countries are listed in addition to Russia and Belarus, far outside the zone of North Atlantic interests, which could jeopardize not only peace, but also democracy in the Kingdom of Good, that is, in the West. We are talking about China, North Korea and Iran, which do not want to submit to the unipolar domination of the only indispensable nation in the world, under Bill Clinton's definition," he went on to say, reiterating that the US has 800 military bases around the world.
The diplomat believes that compromise is necessary to achieve peace, as the history of all past wars teaches us.
"If peace were the focal point of the discussion in Vilnius, we would have had a compromise proposal to work on, not an insistent demand to withdraw Russian troops from Ukrainian territories, which is tantamount to demanding that Russia admit defeat, although it dominates the battlefield among other things," the diplomat went on to say.
"Some will say that this is unfair. History will judge, it has always taught that wars end in compromise if they do not end in the complete defeat of one side. But, as influential observers point out, defeat for Russia, a country possessing 6,000 nuclear warheads, cannot be considered. NATO nevertheless wants the war to continue, at the cost of Ukrainians’ lives, thus confirming its political irresponsibility and cynicism in self-proclaiming themselves as masters of the world," Bradanini said.
He reiterated that many prominent politicians and observers, including Henry Kissinger, Noam Chomsky, Harley Schlanger, Scott Ritter and even CIA chief William Burns, when he was ambassador to Russia, predicted its reaction if NATO approached Ukraine. He also mentioned remarks from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008, who warned that Ukraine's admission to NATO would lead to war with Russia. In this context, he draws attention to the confession that the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass, whose implementation was guaranteed by Berlin and Paris, served only to buy time to arm Kiev in preparation for confrontation with Russia.
He also brought back to mind Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's statement that the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine would be seen as a nuclear threat by Moscow, according to the Russian strategic doctrine, since these aircraft can carry nuclear warheads. "A single question arises - do these gentlemen realize that they are bringing the world to the edge of the abyss?" the diplomat asked.