After two weeks with no public appearances, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an interview on Tuesday accusing Britain and the Baltic states of attempting to provoke war between Russia and NATO – also reiterating that Russia is ready to resume preparations for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “if and when the American side renews their proposal.”
Speculation that Lavrov may have fallen out of favor with Putin led the Kremlin to issue a denial on Monday. Until Tuesday, the longest serving member of Putin’s cabinet had not made an appearance since Oct. 28.
Lavrov’s absence from a televised meeting called in response to Trump’s statement that the US would resume nuclear testing – as well as the news that Lavrov will not fill in for Putin at next month’s G20 meeting in South Africa – added fuel to the flames.
After the FSB claimed to have foiled a British-backed Ukrainian plot to hijack and fly a Russian fighter jet into NATO airspace on Tuesday, however, Lavrov returned to Russian screens. He claimed that London and Kyiv had jointly attempted to force a Russian pilot to fly into Romanian airspace “with the explicit aim of getting this aircraft shot down there, accusing Russia of attacking the North Atlantic Alliance,” according to Russian state media TASS.
“I do not know how the British will wash themselves clean of it, although their ability to play the role of goose coming out of the shower is well known,” he added.
Lavrov also addressed comments made by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda over a fortnight ago, when Vilnius decided to keep the border with Belarus closed until the end of this month due to an influx of Belarusian smuggler balloons.
Nauseda had suggested restricting transit between Russia and its Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad on Oct. 26, according to Lithuanian news outlet LIGA.
“They have been tasked with creating as many problems as possible in relations with the Russian Federation. And at the same time provoke Russia into an act that they will then try to sell to Washington as a basis for launching serious hostilities based on Article 5 of the Washington Treaty,” Lavrov said, as per Russian state media TASS.
Notably, Lavrov also used the opportunity to reiterate that a planned meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest – which Trump cancelled on Oct. 22 because “it didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get” – is still on the cards.
The fact that the Budapest summit apparently fell through after a phone call between Lavrov and his US counterpart Marco Rubio is one of the reasons that the speculation about Lavrov’s apparent fall from grace began.