UNITED NATIONS - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sept. 23 laid the blame for a "bleeding Middle East and North Africa" on the U.S. and its allies, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly smacking of the kind of rhetoric that reflected the state of superpower relations during the Cold War.
In wide-ranging comments, Lavrov depicted Moscow’s military involvement in Syria as crucial to efforts to prevent the crisis from spiraling even more out of control. He accused Ukraine of playing “zero-point games” instead of hewing to agreements meant to reduce the confrontation with his country. He criticized the doping bans on Russian athletes as politically motivated and reproached the West for allegedly stalling on nuclear arms reduction commitments and conventional disarmament.
