Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the United States was fragmenting the very international system which Washington helped to create by undertaking what he said was an illegal operation to topple Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and by threatening Iran with attack.
1news.media reports, citing Reuters, “We are talking about a gross violation of international law,” Lavrov said of the US operation to capture Maduro. He added that Russia remained committed to its agreements with Venezuela, a Russian ally.
Lavrov suggested that the United States, by abandoning the principles it had promoted for so long, was damaging its own image.
“Our American colleagues look unreliable when they act in this way,” Lavrov told a news conference with his Namibian counterpart in Moscow.
Asked about a Bloomberg report that White House envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are seeking to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lavrov said that Putin had repeatedly said he is open to serious discussions about peace in Ukraine.
It would, Lavrov said, be helpful if Washington briefed Moscow on the latest peace proposals for Ukraine.