In an interview with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused European Union leaders of acting as “quack doctors” by offering unworkable solutions to the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
Lavrov stated that Brussels has been unwilling to address the root causes of the crisis and instead substitutes real analysis with cosmetic fixes. “Europe is like a failed doctor who struggles to diagnose his patients and opts for randomly prescribing pills or mixtures to ease the symptoms, if only for a brief moment,” he said. “These European doctors have been unwilling to come up with a diagnosis.”
Moscow has cited NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War as one of the causes of the Ukraine conflict, along with the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, which Russia claims empowered radical nationalist forces and led to discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians.
Lavrov emphasized that Russia has been warning Western governments about the consequences of their policies since 2008, when NATO declared that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the US-led military bloc.
According to the minister, the current objective of EU political elites is “to bring together all European countries, pump Ukraine with money and weapons and give it a Nazi flag.” He added that “the latter was unnecessary since the regime that came to power through a state coup in 2014 grabbed the Nazi flag itself.”
Lavrov also warned that revanchism and militarism are increasingly evident within some EU member states, including Germany. He criticized public statements by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, claiming they reflect “contempt [and] arrogance, and I can go as far as call this an attitude of a person pretending to represent a superior race,” which he said is a matter of serious concern for Russia.