‘European aggression’ behind all global tragedies – Lavrov

Russia has long tried to warn the West against rewriting history, the foreign minister has said

9 APR 2025 CET RT: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. © Getty Images / Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia images

Western European countries have once again “taken up arms” against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, commenting on the increasingly hostile stance of many governments toward Moscow.

Addressing the constant calls to prepare for a presumed Russian attack – a notion which Moscow has dismissed as baseless – Lavrov said all previous global conflicts were sparked by similar aggressive actions from Europe.

“We are witnessing another wave in which Europe is taking up arms against Russia, and by the looks on some faces, even growling at Russia. After all... all global tragedies began with aggressive actions by Europeans: The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II,” he said in an interview for the TASS Children project released on Wednesday.

Lavrov added that during World War II, nearly all “neutral” European countries, in addition to those officially aligned with Nazi Germany, fought alongside Germany – including France.

“They did have a resistance movement, but like most other European countries, the official authorities in Paris meekly surrendered to the will of the victors... and French troops fought battles on the side of Hitler’s Germany, taking part in a number of punitive operations,” he said, adding that “there were many examples of this.”

Lavrov went on to say that France and the UK are “obsessed” with “defeating Russia on the battlefield,” as evidenced by the billions they have spent on Kiev’s war effort and recent discussions about deploying troops to Ukraine, supposedly in a peacekeeping role.

He accused the West, including Washington, of installing what he called an “openly Russophobic Nazi regime” in Ukraine as part of its goal of defeating Russia.

“Some want to quickly and finally erase from history the pages of their national shame, collaborationism, connivance with the Nazis,” he said. “While others see in Nazi ideology some new instrument for maintaining their positions on the European political scene.”

Lavrov added that Russia has long tried to warn the West against rewriting history.

“Consigning history to oblivion, one’s spiritual and moral values, one’s roots, if you will, all this has become one of the main reasons for what we are now seeing in Ukraine,” he said, in reference to the authorities in Kiev who honor World War II Nazi collaborators as national heroes and “undermine and denigrate” the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.

“We will fight against this,” Lavrov said, expressing hope that “not everyone has forgotten the lessons of history.”

“Many leaders... are beginning to understand the dead end and catastrophic consequences,” he said, referring to attempts to defeat Russia.