MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Western politicians continue to intimidate their voters with the myth of the ‘Russian threat’ in order to prevent the opposition from winning the upcoming parliamentary and European elections, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"If they now suddenly stop these rumors about our plans to attack NATO, then the hope of scaring voters and continuing this course will [disappear]," he said in an interview with the radio stations Sputnik, Govorit Moskva and Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that it makes no sense for us to attack them," the top diplomat emphasized.
Lavrov pointed out that the anti-Russian rhetoric of Western politicians in power intensifies as the elections approach. "At the initial stage, when the special military operation began, some people in the United States and Europe said: if we had accepted Ukraine into NATO, Putin would not dare to attack NATO," he said. "And now they say: we can't let Ukraine lose, because if it loses, Putin will immediately attack NATO," the foreign minister stressed.
"You can see the logic: just to scare and frighten," Lavrov underscored. Otherwise, he said, "the opposition will not miss an opportunity to show what this policy of theirs has led to in terms of socio-economic consequences."