Lavrov: Putin and Trump will not allow armed confrontation between US and Russia

RT
Fri, 20 Apr 2018 09:14 UTC

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will absolutely not allow armed confrontation between Russia and the US, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

"Speaking about risks of a military confrontation, I am 100 percent sure that [both the US and Russian] militaries won't allow this, and of course neither will President [Vladimir] Putin or President [Donald] Trump," Lavrov said.

"After all they are leaders, elected by their people and are responsible for their peace," the Russian foreign minister added.

Amid deteriorating relations between Moscow and Washington, Lavrov signaled that there are attempts to ease the knot. In particular, the foreign minister announced that the US president invited his Russian counterpart to Washington during a phone call. Trump said he would "be glad to see [Putin] in the White House" and then added that he "would be happy to make a reciprocal visit [to Moscow]," Lavrov stated.

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During the interview, Lavrov also touched upon the US-led strikes on Syria last week. Trump, along with allies the UK and France, ordered the bombardment following an alleged chemical attack in Douma. It came just hours before experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were due to begin a fact-finding mission there.

After the US-led strikes, Russia no longer has any moral barriers on S-300 missile system deliveries to Syria, Lavrov said. Russia promised not to send S-300s to Damascus around 10 years ago at the request of its partners, he said. "We took into consideration their argument that this would destabilize the situation, despite the missile systems being a purely defensive system."

"We heeded their calls. But now we have no such moral obligation," Lavrov stated.

Syrian air defense systems intercepted 71 out of over 103 missiles launched at civilian and military targets, the Russian Defense Ministry said shortly after the airstrikes. Russian air defense units in Syria were not involved in repelling the attack.

Comment: Sergey Lavrov also said that Russian military will soon provide evidence that Syrian anti-missile systems intercepted missiles launched by the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

"Our General Staff has a very clear picture, we have been monitoring [the attacks] live, and statistics, which our military provided. We are ready to take responsibility for that. If someone argues that all 105 missiles reached their targets, then show your statistics. Our evidence, our claims, calculations are at least not groundless and will be soon provided by our military," Lavrov said.
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During the interview, Lavrov noted that Russia will respond "with dignity" to the anti-Moscow actions taken by Washington."

I am convinced that we need to respond with dignity. We cannot but respond to the seizure of our property, expulsion of diplomats - otherwise we will show the lack of self-respect. But we are not going to resort to some sort of insults, squabbles or rudeness - it is not the style of our president at all," Lavrov said.

Speaking about the recent incident in Syrian city of Douma, Lavrov said that Russia has strong evidence proving the UK involvement in staging a chemical attack in the city.