French President Emmanuel Macron is making statements about possible sending of troops to Ukraine to please Washington and provoke NATO allies, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov for the Belgrade documentary project.

"All the statements by French President Macron over the past few years (and he periodically revived them in the media space) about creating some kind of strategic autonomy - all this turned out to be nothing. No one is thinking about this now. Now, despite the fact that Macron insists that it is still possible that they will send ground troops to Ukraine, this is no longer about strategic autonomy, but about how to please the United States, and at the same time provoke allies in the North Atlantic Alliance itself," the Russian Foreign Minister noted.

Lavrov noted that politicians and the younger generation in the Baltic countries come up with similar ideas.

"In Poland, politicians are mature, but they are also ready to play such a provocative game. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is still showing at least some caution. But [France’s] provocation of the topic of deploying NATO troops in Ukraine is aimed, in particular, at undermining his position in the European Union in the context of Franco-German rivalry. There are a lot of things there. Such a quarrelsome organization. What comes first is not the national interest of its peoples and states, but personal political narrow selfish plans, aspirations and intrigues. This is sad," the minister said.

According to Lavrov, if we compare the generation of politicians of the previous era, how legendary they were, we will see that both the current politicians both "teenagers and politicians of mature biological age do not reach the level of such major figures as Charles de Gaulle, J. Chirac, F. Mitterrand, G. Kohl, G. Schroder."

"Those were people who really thought about the interests of their country, without subordinating them to a single collective Western demand, which we see everywhere now. Europe has completely gone under the United States. There is no independence," Lavrov concluded.

Moscow is ready to talk with the West, but honestly, without cheating and with a guarantee of full consideration of the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

The conclusion President Vladimir Putin made in a recent interview that Russia has already stopped trusting the West is a hard won one, Lavrov noted.

"And what is no less important is that despite everything, we are still ready to talk, but honestly, without cheating, with a guarantee and based on the prevailing realities and full consideration of our legitimate interests that we have formulated," the Russian Foreign Minister said.

Earlier, Lavrov stressed that there would no longer be relations in the previous format between Russia and Western countries, and Moscow would not allow the West to tell it any lies when signing international documents.

The actions of Western countries in Ukraine are promoted by the desire to prevent Russia from becoming a great power, Sergey Lavrov went on.

Commenting on the common opinion in Belgrade that the war that is going on in Ukraine today began not in 2014, not after the coup, but in 1999, when the West stopped hiding all its aspirations for aggression, Lavrov noted that this absolutely coincides with Russian vision, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly outlined in his recent interviews.

"It all started when, after the disappearance of the Soviet Union - let’s not once again talk about the causes [of the break-up] and lament - the Americans felt that the "field" was generally free, there were no sparring partners left on that side of the field and everyone had to be lined up in one row," the minister said.

"I am sure that if at that moment they did not think about the need to "take away" Serbia, Ukraine, but about how to prevent us from becoming a great power again and remain a regional Russian Federation with a huge number of American advisers in our economic, financial, banking structures - that’s a fact," he added.

According to Lavrov, the hegemons tried to perpetuate their dominance by "living at the expense of others." - "The President [in the interview] uses figurative expressions. He talked about vampires, how they tried to rule the world and live at the expense of others. And they are still trying to maintain such neocolonial domination in somewhat ennobled forms," Lavrov went on.

"The United States left one of two largest, most powerful powers. They quickly began to embody all their ambitions and the luck that turned up into practical actions. Yugoslavia and Ukraine - they are from the same series as the subsequent adventures, the grossest aggressions in Iraq, Libya, Syria, absolutely without any international legal basis," the foreign minister said.

Lavrov also recalled that the United States came to Afghanistan with the "sympathies" of the UN Security Council after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

"President Putin was the first to call US President George W. Bush and offered help and support. No one objected or called the entry of American coalition troops into Afghanistan an aggression or occupation. Everyone understood that such a terrorist attack must be held accountable. Twenty years of stay in Afghanistan showed that the Americans did not fight any kind of terrorism. They created structures and organizations there, which later resulted in Al-Qaeda (outlawed in Russia). Then they began to use it to punish and provoke undesirable regimes in the Middle East and other regions," Lavrov said.

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Sources: News Agency - Officials