Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that "the United States can cheat at any moment," claiming Russia had experienced this when the Western military alliance NATO expanded eastward.
"I want to emphasize that everyone knows very well that the United States can cheat at any moment, and much more often they cheat than they keep their own promises, their own proposals," Lavrov said as he addressed a press conference following talks with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto.
Russia has long complained that it was tricked by Western nations at the end of the Cold War into believing that NATO, the Western military alliance, would not expand eastward toward its territory. Analysts say, however, that the Soviet Union was never offered any formal guarantee on limits to NATO expansion and that the "betrayal narrative" is designed to provoke anti-Western sentiment.
In other news, the Kremlin rebuffed Western media reports alleging that Russia could be planning to sabotage wind farms and communications cables in the North Sea, saying they are baseless.