Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a threat and gave the cases of Iraq, Libya, Serbia and Afghanistan as an example, where the alliance caused excesses to achieve its military and political objectives.
"Talk to the citizens of Iraq, Libya, whose countries were destroyed the core," the foreign minister said in an interview with the BBC yesterday.
He specified how in Afghanistan they bombed weddings. “Just because they thought: why are these people getting together? We should bomb them just in case”, and he pointed out that “after that (the destruction), NATO still declares itself a defensive alliance”.
He recalled promises to Moscow that Ukraine's accession was not a danger. "With all due respect to our (NATO) colleagues, Russia has the right to decide for itself what is a threat to its security and what is not," she explained.
After the journalist said that "in the eyes of the world Russia is responsible" for the lives of two British mercenaries sentenced to death in Donetsk, Lavrov assured that he is not interested in "the eyes of the West", but "international law, according to the which mercenaries are not combatants”.
Support Beijing-Moscow
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a telephone conversation on Wednesday to mark the Chinese leader's 69th birthday. They discussed global and bilateral economic and political issues, according to Beijing and Moscow, including the support they plan to continue providing to each other.
