Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused outgoing President Joe Biden of trying to “muck things up” to hand a more volatile world over to successor and predecessor Donald Trump in remarks on Friday.
Lavrov was discussing unconfirmed reports this week that Biden approved Ukraine using the American Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), a long-range missile system, to target locations within Russia, and later reports that Biden would send Ukraine anti-personnel land mines. The Russian government accused Ukraine of using the ATACMS system to bomb Bryansk, a region lying within uncontested Russian territory, on Tuesday, which Ukraine neither confirmed nor denied.
Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has repeatedly described long-range missile attacks as a red line for his country, without specifying exactly how he would respond to a breach of this red line. On Thursday, however, Russia fired a new model missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Ukrainian officials initially described it as a potential intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but Putin, in an address to the Russian people late on Thursday, claimed it was the debut of a new model of hypersonic Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).
Lavrov remarked on the dramatic escalation of tensions in the past week between Russia and the West during a press conference on Friday, accusing the Biden administration of intentionally attempting to worsen the situation in eastern Europe to set President-elect Trump up for failure.
“As for what can be expected from Biden and his outgoing administration, well, the ATACMS supplies and allowing the British and French to use Storm Shadows and SCALPSs certainly have an element of trying to leave as negative a legacy as possible for the next administration,” Lavrov mused, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“It seems that this desire, let’s say, to muck things up, can be seen in the current situation,” Lavrov added, going on to say that sabotaging their successors is “typical of the Democrats” and accusing former President Barack Obama of similarly attempting to “pull the same trick” on Trump before leaving office.
“He [Obama] expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, some 120 people, including their family members,” Lavrov recalled. “What’s more, he demanded they leave Washington on a day when there were no direct flights from Washington, so they had to take a six-hour bus ride all the way to New York with their small children and belongings. In other words, they made things very uncomfortable.”
Lavrov appears to be in lockstep with the official opinions of the Russian government. Putin’s top spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that the Kremlin believed the Biden administration was attempting to prolong the two-year-old direct Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Russia’s special operation began two years ago, Russia has been at war with Ukraine for over a decade through proxy “separatists” in the eastern Donbass region.
“If you look at the trends of the outgoing U.S. administration, they are fully committed to continuing the war in Ukraine and are doing everything they can to do so,” Peskov said.
Peskov, speaking on behalf of Putin’s administration, also suggested this week that Russia is open to negotiations with the incoming Trump administration. Asked about a Reuters report claiming that Putin was open to negotiating ceding some Ukrainian land in exchange for an end to the conflict in discussion with the Trump administration, Peskov said, “the president [Putin] has repeatedly and consistently stated his readiness for contact and negotiations.”
The apparent openness to discussing the conflict with Trump followed an abrasive response from Moscow to Trump’s electoral victory. Initially asked if Putin planned to congratulate Trump for his win, Peskov told reporters on November 6, “Let’s not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state.”
“It is practically impossible to make relations between the United States and Russia any worse as they are already at their lowest point in history,” he lamented.
Putin did ultimately issue a public statement congratulating Trump and complimenting him on his response to an assassination attempt he survived in July.
“His behavior at the moment of an attempt on his life left an impression on me. He turned out to be a brave man,” Putin said of Trump. “He manifested himself in the very correct way, bravely as a man.”
Putin delivered a speech on Thursday describing the Dnipro airstrike earlier that day, claiming that his country used a new “Oreshnik” model of IRBM. He suggested that, in future uses of the weapon, Putin would make a public announcement to help people flee.
“We will do it due to humanitarian concerns – openly, publicly, without any concerns about any countermeasures from the enemy, who will also receive this information,” he claimed. “Why without any concerns? Because there are currently no countermeasures for this weapon at this moment.”
Russia has similarly claimed to develop unstoppable weapons, later proven stoppable by the American Patriot missile system.