EU has become ‘aggressive and bellicose’ amid Ukraine war

The EU has gone from being a “constructive financial platform” to turning into an “aggressive and bellicose” actor amid Russia’s struggle in Ukraine.

That was the declare of Russia’s international minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday. 

It got here earlier than the EU’s international affairs chief, Josep Borrell, introduced the bloc was giving Ukraine one other €500 million to purchase heavy weapons to fend off Moscow’s invasion.

“We’ll present a brand new tranche of 500 extra million to assist the army of Ukraine,” Borrell instructed reporters forward of the G7 assembly in Weissenhaus, on Germany’s Baltic Beach.

The funds can be allotted for the acquisition of heavy weapons and take the EU’s complete monetary assist for Ukraine to €2 billion, he added.

Lavrov, talking earlier than Borrell’s announcement, mentioned: “The EU has developed from a constructive financial platform, because it was created, to an aggressive and belligerent participant which already shows its ambitions far past the European continent.”

As such, Lavrov added that “Kyiv’s need to grow to be a member of the European Union will not be insignificant”.

Extra broadly, he accused the Europeans of dashing “precisely on the trail that NATO has already traced, thus confirming the development in the direction of fusion with the north Atlantic alliance and can, actually, function an appendage” to NATO.

Moscow considers NATO an existential menace and has partly justified its struggle in Ukraine by pointing to the alliance’s enlargement eastwards.

On Thursday, Finland’s leaders known as for the nation to affix NATO “immediately”; Sweden may do the identical within the coming days.

Russia can also be stepping up its verbal assaults on the EU, which has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow following the invasion on 24 February.