
© Vladimir Pesnya / Sputnik
Since the end of the Cold War, Moscow hoped for international peace and cooperation, but certain decisions and actions of its Western partners have led to further "dividing lines" in Europe, and "have largely provoked" the Ukrainian crisis, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
In the early 1990s, "the US and its allies decided to pronounce themselves winners [in the Cold War] and refused to cooperate on creating equal and undivided security, having instead chosen to move dividing lines closer to Russia's borders," Lavrov said Thursday, speaking at the 'Russia & the EU in a changing world' conference in Berlin.
This policy was realized both through expansion of NATO and through an EU program called 'The Eastern Partnership' (EaP), the minister explained, saying that countries in the Eastern Europe were forced to make a choice either to support Russia or the West.
"The largely-provoked-from-the-outside Ukrainian crisis has become the direct consequence of such shortsighted policy of Washington and Brussels," Lavrov said.
Comment: The Duran also reports that Veselnitskaya was seen with Obama's ambassador to Russia 8 days after contacting Trump Jr. (There's nothing to indicate a bigger connection to McFaul than that, however. He denies knowing her or having met her.)
Add to this the fact that the DOJ let her into the country under 'extraordinary circumstances', bypassing the ordinary visa process, and one is right to wonder if this wasn't just a set-up: Further reading: Trump Jr. Releases Emails: Everything You Need To Know About the Trump Jr.-Russian Lawyer Nothing-Burger