By Apr. 24, 2024
Russia’s top diplomat in the United States has shared with Newsweek a stark warning to Washington in Moscow’s first reaction to President Joe Biden‘s signing of a bill to provide some $61 billion in additional wartime aid to Ukraine.
The assistance is viewed by Kyiv and its largely Western supporters as a major boost to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as his forces struggle to fend off recent Russian advances, and Ukrainian cities come under regular missile and drone attack more than two years into Europe’s deadliest conflict in decades. For Moscow, the latest tranche is considered another escalatory step toward an all-out conflict among major powers.
“America has chosen the path of war and agonizing delays of the inevitable collapse of the Zelensky regime,” Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov told Newsweek. “With their decision, local politicians are actually deciding the fate of an entire country, which is being used as a ‘battering ram’ against Russia.”
While the U.S. has portrayed the conflict as a full-scale war of aggression launched more than two years ago by Russia against its neighbor after a long pattern of hybrid hostility, Moscow has considered the ongoing confrontation to be the culmination of NATO expansionism along Russia’s borders. Now, Antonov has accused the U.S. of having “launched an all-out hybrid war against us,” with the Biden administration “encouraging attacks on Russian territory, including strategic deterrent facilities.”
With ties between Washington and Moscow having deteriorated to the point of even nuclear talks failing, Antonov said that “the U.S. did not leave us any leeway while bringing down the much-needed and beneficial bilateral strategic dossier, putting the world before the nuclear threat being escalated by Washington.”
“Thus, the United States is performing a balancing act above burning ground. With bravado of a duelist, it fatally balances on the brink of a direct clash between nuclear powers,” he added. “But it can no longer stay on the thin, worn out ‘tightrope’ of the world order. The U.S. is ready to rush headlong into the abyss, dragging others with it.”
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