Lavrov promises at the UN “full protection” for any territory annexed by Russia

By: News Team

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Russia’s top diplomat said on Saturday that regions of Ukraine where widely disputed referendums are taking place would be under Russia’s “full protection” if annexed to Moscow, amid fear that Russia could escalate the conflict and even use nuclear weapons.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the UN General Assembly and the world media in New York and attempted to justify Russia’s invasion of his neighbor in February by repeating Moscow’s false claims of that the government elected in kyiv was installed illegitimately, full of neo-Nazis and oppressing Russian-speakers in the east of the country.

Russia on Friday launched referendums in four regions of eastern Ukraine with the aim of annexing the territory it has seized by force. kyiv said residents were being coerced into voting and not allowed to leave the regions during the four-day vote, which Western nations dismissed as a farce designed to justify an escalation of the seven-month war.

“After those referendums, Russia will, of course, respect the expression of the will of those people who for many years have suffered from the abuses of the neo-Nazi regime,” Lavrov told a news conference after addressing the assembly.

Asked whether Russia would have grounds to use nuclear weapons to defend Ukraine’s annexed regions, Lavrov said that Russian territory, including territory “enshrined” in the Russian Constitution in the future, “is under the full protection of the Condition”.

“All laws, doctrines, concepts and strategies of the Russian Federation apply to its entire territory,” he said, also referring specifically to the Russian doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons.

The comments came after former President Dmitry Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, explicitly warned on Thursday that any weapon in Moscow’s arsenal, including strategic nuclear weapons, could be used to defend incorporated Russian territories.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Lavrov’s comments – and Putin’s earlier statement that warnings about the use of nuclear weapons were not a lie – were “irresponsible” and “absolutely unacceptable”.

“Ukraine will not budge. We call on all nuclear powers to speak out now and make it clear to Russia that such rhetoric endangers the world and will not be tolerated,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ).

Russia accuses the United States and other countries of being a party to the conflict because they are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself. The likely annexation of Ukrainian territory raises the question of how Russia might respond to the use of Western weapons in those regions.

Ukraine also called for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council on the referendums, calling for Russia to “be held accountable for its new attempts to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders in violation of the UN Charter,” he said on Twitter. Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko.

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