UNITED NATIONS (AP) — As new tensions rise between Russia and NATO powers, Moscow's top diplomat insisted to world leaders Saturday that his nation doesn't intend to attack Europe but will mount a “decisive response” to any aggression.
At the same time, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took a notably measured tone toward the United States in the wake of last month's summit between the countries' leaders.
Though they left without a deal to end Russia's war in Ukraine, Lavrov said Moscow had “some hopes” to keep talking with Washington, and he suggested his country sees U.S. President Donald Trump's administration as a practical-minded counterpart.
Lavrov spoke at the U.N. General Assembly after weeks in which unauthorized flights into NATO’s airspace — intrusions the alliance blames on Russia — have raised alarm around Europe, particularly after NATO jets downed drones over Poland and Estonia said Russian fighter jets flew into its territory and lingered for 12 minutes.
Russia has denied that its planes entered Estonian airspace and has said the drones didn’t target Poland.
But European leaders see the incidents as intentional, provocative moves meant to rattle NATO and to assess its response. The alliance warned Russia this week that NATO would use all means to defend against any further breaches of its airspace.
At the U.N., Lavrov maintained it’s Russia that’s facing threats.
“Russia has never had and does not have any such intentions” of attacking European or NATO countries, he said. “However, any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response. There should be no doubt about this among those in NATO and the EU."
Speaking three years into the Ukraine war
With Russia’s war in Ukraine in its fourth year, U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that he believed Kyiv can win back all the territory it has lost. It was a notable tone shift from a U.S. leader who had previously suggested Ukraine would need to make some concessions and could never reclaim all the areas Russia has occupied since seizing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and launching a full-scale invasion in 2022.
At a news conference Saturday after his speech, Lavrov said Moscow appreciates Trump's proposal that has rekindled dialogue between the two countries. When U.S. and Russian interests don't coincide, he said, “the most important thing is not to let it result in confrontation or collision, especially a hot confrontation, and we're united in this position, in diplomacy.”
He said some unnamed European countries have turned diplomacy “into kissing up to their friends from Washington,” so he believes the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine and substitute diplomacy with sanctions.
“This is a path without any promise. It won't succeed," Lavrov said. “However, frank dialogue on any matters — well, we'll see that the U.S. is prepared for that, and we're also prepared to conduct it.”
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country and the U.S. had a “mutual understanding” and that Trump's administration "is listening to us.” Notwithstanding Trump's remarks this week that Russia's failure to prevail made it “look bad,” Lavrov sounded an open note toward Washington from the U.N. microphone, which he often has used to lambaste the West.
“In the approaches of the current U.S. administration, we see a desire not only to contribute to ways to realistically resolve the Ukrainian crisis, but also a desire to develop pragmatic cooperation without adopting an ideological stance,” the diplomat said.
To be sure, Lavrov still had sharp words for NATO, an alliance that includes the U.S., and for the West in general and the European Union.
Trump's emerging view of Ukraine is part of the equation
Trump's new view of Ukraine's prospects came after he met with its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the assembly sidelines Tuesday — seven months after a televised blow-up between the two in the Oval Office. This time, the doors were closed, and the tenor was evidently different — "a good meeting,” as Zelenskyy described it in his assembly speech the next day.
For the fourth year in a row, Zelenskyy appealed to the gathering of presidents, prime ministers and other top officials to get Russia out of his country — and warned that inaction would put other countries at risk.
“Ukraine is only the first," he said. its president,
Russia has offered various explanations for the Ukraine war, among them ensuring Russia's own security after NATO expanded eastward over the years and drew closer with Ukraine after Russia's move into Crimea. Russia also has said its offensive was meant to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine and the West have denounced Russia's invasion as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Addressing the devastating war in Gaza, Lavrov condemned Hamas militants' surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but said “there is no justification” for Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians, including children. Nor, he added, is there is a basis for any potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which Palestinians consider a key part of their future state, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem.
Between the Gaza war and the situation in the West Bank, “we are essentially dealing with an attempt at a kind of coup d’etat aimed at burying U.N. decisions on the creation of a Palestinian state,” Lavrov said.
The Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel; 251 were taken hostage. Israel’s sweeping offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not give a breakdown of civilian and combatant deaths but says around half of those killed were women and children.
The international community has long embraced a “two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state, saying it would reward Hamas — a position he reiterated Friday at the General Assembly.