Vying to replace 56-year-old British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 46-year-old Foreign Secretary Elizabeth [Liz] Truss showed why she’s the last one for the job, insulting 72-year-old Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a Moscow meeting. Truss thought she’d help the tense situation in Ukraine, after 44-year-old French President Emmanuel Macron spent five hours working the contours of a de-escalation plan for Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Like an English bulldog, Truss insulted Lavrov, confronting him on the most crass accusations made by the fake U.S. and foreign press. “I can’t see any other reason for having 100,000 troops stationed on the border, apart from to threaten Ukraine,” Truss told Lavrov. “And if Russia if serious about diplomacy, they need to remove those troops and desist from the threats,” Truss barked at Lavrov.
Truss acted like she was trying to reverse all the good progress made my Macron, who spent hours with Putin trying to come up with a reasonable compromise to end the Ukraine crisis. Truss surely knows that Putin deployed the Russian army to the Ukraine border to send a loud message not to Kiev but to Washington and NATO to stop arming Ukraine to the teeth near the Russian border. Truss repeated President Joe Biden’s, 79, worn out talking points, insisting that Russia was close to invading Ukraine, the epitome of U.S. fake news. Putin and Lavrov have stated clearly that the Kremlin has no intent of invading Ukraine. Russian controls the Crimean Peninsula since March 1, 2014 to protect its Sevastopol naval base. Truss’s belligerent tone toward Lavrov was highly counterproductive, especially after Macron did everything possible to find a realistic solution to the Ukraine problem.
Truss repeats the same snarky attitude as Biden, his 59-year-old Secretary of State Joe Biden and 45-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, all of whom have accused Moscow of war mongering against Ukraine. Putin has explained very clearly the Russian Federation wants the U.S. and NATO to agree not to allow Ukraine to join NATO, to stop encroaching on Eastern Europe, but, more importantly, to stop supplying Ukraine with lethal arms. Truss knows that Putin’s troops are massed on the Ukraine border to get U.S. and NATO’s attention. “I’m honestly disappointed that our conversation turned out like the mute with deaf. We appear to be listening but we’re not hearing anything,” said Lavrov. So much fake news from the U.S. and Europe has pushed the idea of an “imminent” Russian invasion. None of the West’s accusations have proven correct.
When Biden said at a long-awaited press conference Jan. 19 that a Russian invasion was “imminent,” could happen any day, it caused panic in Kiev, prompting 44-year-old Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to push back. Zelensky told Biden, with all due respect, that he sees no Russian invasion anytime soon, if at all. Yet if you following all the fake news in Washington and the EU, it’s exactly what Truss repeated to Lavrov. “It’s like when they say that Russia is waiting for the ground to freeze so that tanks can easily enter Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “It seems that or British colleagues were on similar [frozen] ground today, off of which bounced all the facts we presented them. When you consider that the U.K. has no dog in the fight in Ukraine, why is Trusss trying to promote war on the European Continent? Like her U.S. counterpart Blinken, Truss antagonizes an already tense situation.
Biden said Dec. 8, 2021 and more recently Jan. 25 that the U.S. will not put boots on the ground in Ukraine, whether Russia invades or not. So Russia knows they would not face a concerted U.S. and NATO push back on any military action. But Truss repeats the same pernicious propaganda pushed by the White House that a Russian invasion is “imminent.” For some unknown reason, the New York Times, that’s pushed the White House propaganda about an “imminent” invasion, admitted Feb. 8 that Russian could keep its troops, without an invasion, there for months. But if you listen to Truss, she’s lecturing Lavrov about Russia’s troop deployments inside the Russian border. “No one is undermining Russia’s security—that is simply not true,” Truss said. Truss, like Lavrov says, is blind to NATO encroachment by supplying lethal arms to Ukraine and other former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
Truss talked tough to Lavrov but showed she’s over her head, no match for Lavrov, the senior Russian diplomat. Barking threats or orders about the Ukraine crisis only makes things worse, especially coming from the U.K. that has no ax to grind. Since Brexit was complete Jan. 31, 2020, why is Truss trying to get the European Union into a conflict with the Russian Federation? Biden already said he would not send troops to defend Ukraine, invasion or not. “Why I’m here in Moscow is that Russia has a clear choice,” Truss lectured Lavrov. “They can pursue the path of diplomacy, work with NATO to improve European security, or continue down the path that they have been indicating by amassing troops on the border in a threatening way,” Truss said. Truss should consult with the EU, especially Macron, before shooting off her mouth at a delicate time to find a real solution.
