The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia has found a new justification for the invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of its territories, saying that this is Russia’s way of conducting an “honest” dialogue with the West on an equal footing, TASS reports.

“In order to neutralize security threats that have reached an unacceptable level, the leadership of the Russian Federation has taken difficult but necessary steps,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs notes in a document published on its website in which it presents its “results” in terms of foreign policy for 2022. year.

“Recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the start of a military special operation, the holding of referendums in the DPR, LPR (without Donetsk and Luhansk), as well as in the liberated territories of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. , with subsequent incorporation into the Russian Federation – these events, as well as the return to the homeland of Crimea in 2014, will forever remain significant in the history of Russia,” states Russian diplomacy.

“At the same time, they risked the 30-year period of Russia’s honest attempts to build equal interaction with the collective West,” added the Russian Foreign Ministry.

It claims that Moscow’s “decisive actions” revealed the “true intentions and approaches of Western countries” towards Russia, including “the intention to inflict a strategic defeat on our country” and “remove it from the world geopolitical arena”. .

Russia’s excuses for invading Ukraine

It will be recalled that President Vladimir Putin, in his speech in which he announced the order to the Russian armed forces to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine early in the evening of February 24, stated that the goals of the invasion are the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine.

For several months, the Kremlin has banned the media from using the term “war” to describe the conflict under the pretext of discrediting or spreading “false information” about the actions of the country’s armed forces, shutting down the last Russian independent television stations and publications that had the courage to report on the realities of the “special forces operation.” .

However, in April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov found a new justification for invading Ukraine, saying the war was aimed at ending the “reckless expansion of the United States” and other Western powers.

But Lavrov’s comments came after Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Moscow’s Defense Ministry, said Russia had entered Ukraine to neutralize “laboratories” developing biological weapons that would use birds to launch attacks on Russian soil.

Russia, however, says that it has never attacked anyone in its history

Konashenkov’s remarks came after the Russian military said it had uncovered evidence that Ukraine had experimented with several dangerous pathogens, including plague and anthrax, allegations it has so far failed to provide credible evidence for.

In a series of strange comments made in April, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova appeared to justify the invasion by saying that Ukrainians had banned Russian cookbooks and borscht.

The statements came after Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, insisted a month earlier that Russia had not actually invaded anyone, echoing comments recently made by Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman.

On February 20, 3 days before the start of the Russian invasion, Peskov also stated that Moscow had no intention of attacking Ukraine and that Russia had never invaded any country in its history.

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