By Tom Balmforth and Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned NATO and the European Union on Saturday that “any aggression against my country will be met with a decisive response.”
As Russia’s war rages in Ukraine, tensions have mounted along NATO’s eastern flank in recent weeks as Estonia has accused Moscow of sending three fighter jets into its airspace and NATO jets shot down Russian drones in Polish airspace.
“Russia is being accused of almost planning to attack the North Atlantic Alliance and European Union countries. President Putin has repeatedly debunked these provocations,” Lavrov told the United Nations General Assembly.
U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that he endorsed the idea of shooting down Russian jets that violate NATO airspace, part of a rhetorical shift that saw him mock Russia’s military performance in Ukraine and call it a paper tiger.
The United States also told the U.N. Security Council it would “defend every inch of NATO territory.”
Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister for more than two decades, said Moscow was alarmed by remarks by some politicians in EU and NATO capitals of a looming World War Three as a “likely scenario.”
“These figures are undermining any efforts to find a fair balance of interests among all of the members of the international community by trying to impose their unilateral approaches on everyone else,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov met U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth and Michelle NicholsEditing by Nick Zieminski)
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