© Getty Images / Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia imagesRussian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Addressing the constant calls to prepare for a presumed Russian attack - a notion which Moscow has dismissed as baseless - Lavrov said all previous global conflicts were sparked by similar aggressive actions from Europe.
"We are witnessing another wave in which Europe is taking up arms against Russia, and by the looks on some faces, even growling at Russia. After all... all global tragedies began with aggressive actions by Europeans: The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II," he said in an interview for the TASS Children project released on Wednesday.
Lavrov added that during World War II, nearly all "neutral" European countries, in addition to those officially aligned with Nazi Germany, fought alongside Germany - including France.
"They did have a resistance movement, but like most other European countries, the official authorities in Paris meekly surrendered to the will of the victors... and French troops fought battles on the side of Hitler's Germany, taking part in a number of punitive operations," he said, adding that "there were many examples of this."
Lavrov went on to say that France and the UK are "obsessed" with "defeating Russia on the battlefield," as evidenced by the billions they have spent on Kiev's war effort and recent discussions about deploying troops to Ukraine, supposedly in a peacekeeping role.
He accused the West, including Washington, of installing what he called an "openly Russophobic Nazi regime" in Ukraine as part of its goal of defeating Russia.
"Some want to quickly and finally erase from history the pages of their national shame, collaborationism, connivance with the Nazis," he said. "While others see in Nazi ideology some new instrument for maintaining their positions on the European political scene."
Lavrov added that Russia has long tried to warn the West against rewriting history.
"Consigning history to oblivion, one's spiritual and moral values, one's roots, if you will, all this has become one of the main reasons for what we are now seeing in Ukraine," he said, in reference to the authorities in Kiev who honor World War II Nazi collaborators as national heroes and "undermine and denigrate" the role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany.
"We will fight against this," Lavrov said, expressing hope that "not everyone has forgotten the lessons of history."
"Many leaders... are beginning to understand the dead end and catastrophic consequences," he said, referring to attempts to defeat Russia.
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But nowadays, you even have to consider the significant hostile section of the population - -a.k.a. muslim immigrants. They alone can collapse every single EU government
The Fasces are Roman, nor German. Apparently no one knows what the Fasces actually are in practice, except that images of the Praetorian Guard has them carrying Fasces. For the most part in appearance, and in most descriptions, they are claimed to consist of an axe with a bundle of rods around the handle. There may be, but I have never found, an image of the actual axe handle (although sometimes shown outside the bundle) - usually the only thing showing is a blade which resembles an axe-head, sticking out of the rods, at or near the top end.
The Fasces are found prominently displayed, on some US coinage and currency, and even in the Lincoln Memorial.
The Fasces appear to be worthless as weaponry, as they are almost literally unwieldy. There have been some speculation they might have been electrical in nature and perhaps related to the Vajra.
The business with the axe is an add-on. That addition symbolized, authorized, the application of the power to inflict death as a punishment. Unless you got thrown off the Tarpian Rock Roman citizens could not be executed so the axe business applied to non-Romans and wasn't seen or used much around Rome itself. The direction of the axe - facing front or rear - had additional meaning.
In Olde England when an accused was escourted into court the halberd axes carried by the guards faced forward. If it was a guilty verdict the axes were reversed. By and large all the common folks everywhere well understood all this business.