Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday accused the West of wanting to inflict a lasting defeat against Moscow and lashed out against European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen who earlier arrived in Kyiv.
“Ursula von der Leyen… said that the outcome of the war should be the defeat of Russia, the kind of defeat that for decades, for many decades, Russia cannot restore its economy,” Lavrov said in comments aired on Russian state television.
“Is this not racism, not Nazism — not an attempt to solve ‘the Russian question’” Lavrov added, evoking Russia’s victory against Nazi Germany in World War II.
The European Commission chief announced she had arrived in Kyiv with a team of commissioners and the bloc’s most senior diplomat earlier Thursday, a day before a Ukraine-European Union summit in the war-torn country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently drawn parallels between what he calls Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and the war against Nazi Germany.
He launched the conflict in Ukraine in February last year with the announced aim of “de-Nazifying” the country.
AFP