Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said a war between Russia and Europe would be “very short” if European countries attacked Russia.
“If Europe attacks Russia, it will be a completely different war, and it will be very short,” Lavrov said on Wednesday, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.
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The Russian foreign minister insisted that Moscow was neither preparing for nor interested in a military confrontation with Western countries. His remarks came as European governments have increasingly discussed strengthening their defenses against potential Russian aggression.
Lavrov also repeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning that Moscow would view the deployment of foreign military forces to Ukraine as a declaration of war.
Several of Ukraine’s European allies have discussed a possible international contingent as part of future security guarantees.
Lavrov said any settlement of the war in Ukraine would require fulfilling what Moscow calls the original objectives of its “special military operation,” the Kremlin’s term for Russia’s full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.
Russia has repeatedly used shifting and broadly defined objectives to justify the invasion. Lavrov again blamed Western policies for the war, despite Russia having sent its troops across Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
He also accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of seeking to eliminate Russian language and culture from Ukraine. However, Kyiv rejects such allegations and says Moscow uses claims about protecting Russian speakers to justify its aggression.
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Lavrov additionally accused Western countries of attempting to interfere in Russia’s State Duma elections, both inside the country and abroad. He presented no evidence to support the allegation.
Poland and NATO against Russia
On Tuesday, Kremlin aide Nikolai Patrushev claimed Polish statehood would cease to exist within “two or three days” if Warsaw entered a military conflict with Russia.
“If Poland enters into military action against Russia, our country will use the entire arsenal of forces and means at its disposal, and Warsaw will cease to exist within two or three days,” Patrushev said.
Russia possesses one of the world’s largest nuclear stockpiles, but Patrushev did not explicitly refer to nuclear weapons in the quoted remarks.
His comments came in response to Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who said during the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv on Sept. 12-13, that NATO would defeat Russia “quite quickly” if Moscow attacked the alliance.
“If Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly,” Sikorski said.
The Polish minister pointed to NATO’s air power, estimating that European members of the alliance have about 2,500 military aircraft and describing their advantage over Russia as overwhelming.
Patrushev accused Sikorski of assessing Russia’s military capabilities in an “amateurish” way. He also claimed that Russian forces were not using their full potential in Moscow’s war against Ukraine, which the Kremlin continues to describe as a “special military operation.”
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