The Minister of Foreign Affairs of President Vladimir Putin, Sergei Lavrov, expressed hope that US President Joe Biden remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as he approaches the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union and the United States came close to nuclear war.

Then US President John F. Kennedy discovered that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion (an attempt by US-backed Cuban exiles to overthrow the communist regime, which was thwarted by Cuba). and the US sent nuclear missiles to Italy and Turkey.

In an interview with a Russian state television documentary on the missile crisis, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there are similarities between the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the war in Ukraine, mainly because Russia is now threatened by Western weapons in Ukraine.

“I hope that in today’s situation, President Joe Biden will have more opportunities to understand who and how gives orders,” Lavrov said. “This situation is very worrying.”

“The difference is that back in 1962, Khrushchev and Kennedy found the strength to show responsibility and wisdom, and now we don’t see such benevolence on the part of Washington and its satellites,” Lavrov said.

The spokesman for the National Security Council of the White House refused to comment on Lavrov’s words, but emphasized his previous comments on maintaining open lines of communication with Moscow.

Top US and Russian generals held phone talks on Monday for the first time since May, a day after the US and Russian defense ministers spoke for the second time in three days after not speaking since May.

On October 27, 1962, the world came close to nuclear war when the captain of a Soviet submarine wanted to launch a nuclear weapon after the US Navy dropped anti-submarine grenades around the submarine.

Kennedy later secretly agreed to withdraw all missiles from Turkey so that Khrushchev would also withdraw all missiles from Cuba. The crisis was “defused”, although it became a symbol of the danger of superpower rivalry in the “Cold War”.

President Vladimir Putin calls the conflict in Ukraine, among other things, the West’s rejection of Russia’s concerns about the security of post-Soviet Europe and, in particular, the eastward expansion of the NATO military alliance.

The United States and its European allies say Russia’s concerns are overblown and cannot justify an invasion of the former Soviet neighbor, whose borders Moscow recognized after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Ukraine says it will fight until it expels all Russians from its territory.

Asked what Russia should do now in the current crisis, Lavrov said: “The readiness of Russia, including President Vladimir Putin, for negotiations remains unchanged.”