European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s remarks to the effect a military solution in Ukraine has no alternatives are extraordinary and considerably change the rules of the game, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Rossiya-24 round-the-clock television news channel in an interview, TASS reports.
"When the chief diplomat of an individual country or some organization - in this particular case Josep Borrell represents the diplomacy of the European Union - says outright that a certain conflict can be resolved exclusively by military means, this means that he has committed a slip of the tongue or a blunder and said something nobody had empowered him to say. Anyway, this statement is something out of the ordinary, of course," Lavrov agreed.
"The very fact that Borrell said this against an unprecedented, aggressive background, in fact considerably changes the rules of the game, if you wish. The European Union has not acted as a military organization ever before," Lavrov said, adding that the Foreign Ministry would analyze these statements within two days and make an official comment.
Lavrov recalled that the EU was currently discussing its first defense strategy Strategic Compass, envisaging a considerable increase in military spending and creation of a collective military structure. He said that Germany for the first time in postwar history provided an extra 100 billion euros for building up military muscle, which heralds a qualitative change, too.
"The end result of all this independence is zero, because everything that is being done is totally controlled by the United States. The European Union has no independent role of its own, including the efforts being exerted within the European Union," Lavrov said. He stressed that Brussels was under control through the position of Poland, the Baltic countries and Denmark, "which will not let the EU drift away from NATO; on the contrary, they will be pushing the EU into NATO’s web."
