Moscow, Mar 25:
Announcing the possible deployment of troops to Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to “please” the US leadership, as well as to provoke NATO allies, and his actions are not related to plans to create a “strategic autonomy” of Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“Now, if we take Macron and his insistence that ‘it is possible that we will send ground troops to Ukraine’ – this is no longer about ‘strategic autonomy,’ but about ‘pleasing’ the United States, at the same time provoking allies in the North Atlantic Alliance itself,” Lavrov said in an interview released on Sunday for a “Belgrade” documentary dedicated to the 25th anniversary of NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia.
Current European leaders do not consider national interests a priority, binding them to “a unified collective Western demand,” Lavrov stated.
“Europe has completely ‘fallen’ under the United States. There is no independence. All the talks of Macron in recent years, and he periodically ‘revived’ them in the media about the creation of some kind of ‘strategic autonomy’ – all this turned out to be a ‘flop’,’” the Minister said.
Lavrov also called the European Union a “squabbling organisation” where “personal political narrow-minded plans, aspirations and intrigues take precedence over the national interests of their peoples and states”.
