[Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson] Maria Zakharova has commented on a rumor that is currently being spread in the West, that Moscow is allegedly preparing for a nuclear war. Such statements are a hatchet job, Zakharova stressed, in a commentary that was published on the Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel.
The reason for this new round of hysteria in Western countries was an interview with [foreign minister] Sergei Lavrov, which foreign politicians and media have tried to use in their favor, saying that Russia is to blame for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Ms. Zakharova said: “Our country is against nuclear war. This is what our minister has said. This is what our diplomacy is guided by in its activities. Perhaps the problem is that western capitals read these interviews as they are narrated in the western media? That is the only possible justification. They simply should not have switched off their alternative sources of information; then they might have listened to Russia’s statements as they were originally made, and not according to NATO’s own methodology.”