Burc Eruygur
31 May 2023•Update: 31 May 2023
ISTANBUL
Russia's foreign minister on Wednesday blamed the UK for not only inciting Ukraine to commit "terrorist acts," but also for being one of the main actors inciting the West to openly support Kyiv.
"London is one of the main puppeteers, inciting the whole West to support Ukraine more and more openly and more seriously,” Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference in Maputo, Mozambique, where he was on an official visit.
Lavrov said UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly “speculated that London does not encourage strikes on Russia,” but that Ukrainian authorities and the Ukrainian Armed Forces “allegedly know better how they should secure their territorial integrity.”
“(This is) direct incitement to what the terrorists in Kyiv have been doing," the top Russian diplomat claimed.
He added that the Russian army is dealing with the consequences of the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine, which he claimed a "criminal policy."
It is a “lie” as the West supplies Ukraine with weapons while pretending not to support attacks against Russia, he said.
Lavrov’s comments come a day after Cleverly said that Ukraine has the right to “project force beyond its borders” in self-defense.
The UK has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since the war began in February last year. It is providing economic, humanitarian, and defensive military assistance to Kyiv, as well as imposing sanctions on Russia.
US ambassador must ‘know his place’
Lavrov also commented on statements made by the US ambassador to South Africa, stressing that he needs to "know his place" and "not get involved in other people's affairs."
“We never violate international norms, but our Western colleagues violate them by declaring neutrality in regard to the events in Ukraine, pumping this country with a huge amount of modern long-range and generally unsafe weapons, including for those who use them, I mean shells with depleted uranium, for example," he said.
He added that it is better for US ambassadors to “take care of their own image in the eyes of the foreign public,” based on threats voiced by Western officials to “kill all Russians."
Unlike the West, he said, Russia conveys its position on Ukraine and respects the “mental abilities of our interlocutors, believing that they themselves are able to draw conclusions, while the West does not show such respect.”
On May 11, US Ambassador Reuben Brigety told reporters that, despite claiming neutrality, Washington believes South Africa has supplied arms to Russia.
A day later, the South African Foreign Ministry summoned Brigety for his comments, after which it announced that the envoy apologized to the government and people of South Africa for his remarks.
