Sergey V. Lavrov accused the United States and its
allies of stoking a conflict in the country’s east...
...after President Biden and Mr. Putin of Russia spoke for about 50 minutes on Thursday, Yuri V. Ushakov, Mr. Putin’s foreign policy adviser,... told journalists in a briefing early Friday in Moscow,“In principle, we are satisfied with the contact, the negotiations, because they have an open, substantive, concrete character.""Just hours after," the Times reports, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told the Russian Information Agency,
“The civil war in Ukraine, ongoing for eight years, is far from over. The country’s authorities don’t intend to resolve the conflict” through diplomacy...
Lavrov stole that line directly from Adolph Hitler.
“Unfortunately, we see the United States and other NATO nations supporting the militaristic intentions of Kyiv, provisioning Ukraine with weapons and sending military specialists,” Mr. Lavrov said.
The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer:
,,,Mr. Lavrov’s remarks were the latest in a series of conflicting commentary from the Kremlin that has seesawed between ominous and conciliatory, sometimes within the space of a few days. Earlier in December, Mr. Putin said Moscow might resort to “military technical” means, referring to the use of force, if talks failed.
...
Mr. Lavrov’s comments later in the day, in contrast, revived a more confrontational tone. ...
I acknowledge that I am out of my league in interpreting diplomatic language and drawing conclusions. I have acknowledged this in the past. Still, I'm writing this and I don't 100% (only...90%?) trust American reporting on Russia, so for what it is worth I do not see clear "conflicting commentary" or "seesawing." Are we not "provisioning Ukraine with weapons and sending military specialists"? I got tired in writing about the "complete rupture" article and didn't excerpt some other accounts of American actions and statements. Here's one directly on point to Lavrov's remark:
The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian military to fund what it characterizes as purely defensive arms, including anti-tank missiles to repel a threatened Russian invasion. Russia has called those offensive weapons that threaten its own forces.
And this is my overarching point: why are we involved in Ukraine at all? That sounds callous, they were invaded by Russia after they attempted to move West in the Euromaidan movement in 2014, but Ukraine is not even a NATO member, it was once independent, then annexed by the U.S.S.R., then given back its independence by Khrushchev but still, of course, kept in the Soviet orbit. Putin rushed to tell Condoleeza Rice when he heard her mention the word, "Ukraine is ours." It was not, but neither was it then, or is it now, ours. And on the advent of Euromaidan Putin made sure it would not be in the American/E.U. orbit and would remain Russia's. By what right have we "provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the Ukrainian military"? Are we so dense that we do not see that that is compelling evidence of Russian accusations of an intent to encircle, completely consistent with NATO's expansion east after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. rather than its disbandment.
After Russian troops massed near the Ukrainian border over the fall, officials in Moscow repeatedly characterized the eastern Ukraine conflict as a pressing security concern for Russia...Where is the "pressing security concern for" the U.S. in Urkaine?
Here's another excerpt from "complete rupture":
...Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, said in a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations that the flow of arms to Ukraine would continue, raising the potential cost of an invasion and occupation. ...
One final addendum from "complete rupture":
While the tone of the call was constructive, according to the Kremlin aide, Mr. Putin repeated his claims that Russia felt threatened by an encroaching NATO. He said that Russia would “conduct itself as the United States would behave if offensive weapons were near the United States.”
1) Where is the "seesawing"? Where the "conflicting commentary"? 2) Isn't Putin correct? In the Cuban Missile Crisis under JFK how did the U.S. "conduct itself" when the U.S.S.R. secretly "provisioned" Cuba with missiles which we called offensive and Khrushchev called defensive?
