Russia’s war against Ukraine has brought relations between Moscow and the West to the breaking point. After being declared a “direct threat” at the NATO Summit, Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “An ‘iron curtain’ has come down between Russia and the West. From now on, we will trust neither the Americans nor the EU.”
After Russia was defined as a ‘direct threat’ at the NATO Summit, a harsh reaction came from Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov used the Cold War-era term “iron curtain” in his latest statement. “The ‘iron curtain’ has come down between Russia and the West,” Lavrov said, AFP reported.
- Lavrov: The iron curtain is practically coming down, but be careful, don’t let them squeeze anything
‘THE EUROPEAN UNION DESTROYED ALL RELATIONS OVERNIGHT’
Speaking at a press conference after meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei in Minsk, Lavrov said that the European Union (EU) had destroyed almost overnight all the relations with Russia that it had built over decades, RT reported. “I can say that from now on we will trust neither the Americans nor the EU. We will do everything necessary to avoid dependence on them in critical sectors.”
Referring to relations with Brussels since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Lavrov said, “Twice-yearly summits, meetings between the Russian government and the European Commission, joint areas where ‘roadmaps’ are drawn up, sectoral dialogues… All this… These relations no longer exist.”
FIRST WINSTON CHURCHILL USED THE ‘IRON CURTAIN’
“The ‘iron curtain’ has come down between Russia and the West,” Lavrov said, to which Belarusian Foreign Minister Makei replied, “The West is now erecting the iron curtain itself.” Makei said he was referring not only to the political and economic barriers along the Polish-Belarusian border.
The term “iron curtain” was first used by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after the Second World War. At a meeting in Missouri, USA in 1946, Churchill said that “an iron curtain has descended on the continent”, referring to the establishment of socialist governments in the territories liberated by the Red Army in Eastern Europe.
