Moscow ready to use “any means” to prevent West from inflicting “strategic defeat”: Russian minister Lavrov

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson has said that the new hypersonic missile used by his country to strike Ukraine showed that Russia is ready to use any means to prevent the West from achieving its goal of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on the country.

Russia is ready to send additional messages if the West does not draw the necessary conclusions after the use of the Oreshnik missile, Lavrov said in the interview to the American journalist as cited by Russian news agency TASS.

The top aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is possible only if Kiev abandons its plans to join NATO, closes Western military bases in the country and cancels exercises involving foreign troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had used its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on its on November 21 strike against Ukranian city Dnipro.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov clarified that the Dnipro attack was an answer to the West’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire long-range conventional missiles into Russia.

As per reports, Ukraine had used the ATACMS of the US and Storm Shadow missiles given by UK to strike Russian territory.

Western thinking that Russia’s “red lines” can be moved is a major blunder, Lavrov told Carlson in the interview.

“If they are following the logic which some Westerners have been pronouncing lately, that don’t believe that Russia has red lines, they announced their red lines, these red lines are being moved again and again. This is a very serious mistake,” the top Russian diplomat pointed out.

He also noted that statements by some NATO officials about the possibility of preventive strikes on Russia cause concern.

Russian state media cited Lavrov telling Carlson, “We don’t have any intention to exterminate Ukrainian people. They are brothers and sisters to the Russian people.”

Meanwhile, the Russian minister in his over an hour-and-half long interview with Carlson as cited by TASS news agency stated that Russia wants normal relations with the United States and sees no reason why the two countries cannot cooperate.

The top Russian diplomat clarified that Russia will judge the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump by concrete steps, but outgoing US President Joe Biden wants to leave Trump a heavy legacy.

Trump is a strong and friendly politician, but he is not pro-Russian, Lavrov was cited in the interview as per TASS.

The ball in Russia’s contacts with the US president-elect is in Trump’s court, as per Lavrov. President-elect Donald Trump had said that he will end the Russia-Ukraine war that had begun in the year 2022, without saying how, and has criticised billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine under Joe Biden.

Lavrov further said that many in Russia would like to make the lifting of sanctions a condition for an agreement on settling the crisis in Ukraine, but the country has withstood them and grown stronger.

“And we learned a lot after the sanctions started. The sanctions started under President Obama. They continued in a very big way under the first term of Donald Trump. And these sanctions under the Biden administration are absolutely unprecedented. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you know. They would never kill us, so they are making us stronger,” Lavrov pointed out in his interview with Carlson.