Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday warned that the new Cold War which has seen Moscow and NATO in a showdown over Ukraine for nearly the past three years is turning into a "hot" East-West conflict, according to the remarks in RIA Novosti.
Lavrov issued the comments before an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) council meeting in Malta. He said the West is behind a "reincarnation of the Cold War, only now with a much greater risk of a transition to a hot stage."
He further lashed out at US hegemony in different sectors of the globe: "Military exercises are growing with native participation in the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Straits around the Korean Peninsula. Clearly, this is an attempt to destabilize the entire Eurasian continent," the Russian top diplomat asserted.
Later he was asked by a media outlet about the new Cold War remarks, to which he responded: "All these fantasies are only exacerbating the situation, and show that the people who hold such ideas, prefer not to hear the very clear warnings that President Putin has repeatedly given."
This reference to "fantasies" was in response to reports that Western countries such as Germany and France could be open to sending Western troops to Ukraine.
He has additionally laid blame for this new Cold War squarely on the West:
"All the previous years after the end of the Cold War, the West agreed on some right things, rhetorically praised these right things, but in reality grossly violated all the agreements and did everything to suppress the legitimate interests of Russia," Lavrov said.
During the speech several foreign ministers from rival nations who have declared Moscow an enemy walked out of the room. This included the ministers of Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Poland.
Lavrov later in turn made a point of walking out of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's speech, as the Biden top envoy blasted Lavrov for a "tsunami of misinformation."
US-Russia relations have reached near breaking point, but President-elect Trump, who will enter the White House again on Jan.20, is vowing a quick negotiated solution to the Ukraine war. This will require directly engaging President Putin, which some career military and State Dept. officials have been quick to criticize and reject.